Faculty Bibliography
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Roscoe Pound was one of the most celebrated figures in twentieth century American legal thought, having originated the field of sociological jurisprudence which presaged legal realism and having served for two decades as Dean of Harvard Law School. Less well known is his extended role in China as a principal advisor to the Nationalist government as it fought a civil war during the 1940s against the Chinese Communist Party. And even less fully explicated is the story of how Pound's ideas influenced Chinese legal thought to this day and of how China influenced his thinking. Pound for Pound has two principle objectives. The first is to reconstruct, from archival and other materials, Pound's adventures (and misadventures) in China, and then to examine the ways in which his thought was first lionized by Chinese scholars, then denounced during the early years of the People's Republic of China, and subsequently, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, embraced there. The second is to use Pound's experience to raise questions about the role of U.S. and other foreign scholars involved in Chinese legal development over the past several decades that have not received the scrutiny warranted.
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Peter Singer is well known for having made a powerful case for a vastly greater commitment, by each of us individually and by society, to the alleviation of global poverty. He is also well known for his views regarding the lives of “profoundly intellectually disabled humans,” going so far as to make the case that [t]here will surely be some nonhuman animals whose lives, by any standard, are more valuable than the lives of some humans. A chimpanzee, dog, or pig, for instance, will have a higher degree of self-awareness and a greater capacity for meaningful relations with others than a severely retarded infant or someone in a state of advanced senility. The case Singer makes for global poverty alleviation is in sharp tension with his treatment of disability in three important interrelated respects. First, Singer’s argument for poverty alleviation exemplifies well his call for a reason-based ethics grounded in an equal consideration of the interests of all parties affected by one’s decisions. However, his treatment of disability is troublingly imprecise as to matters of life and death. At times, he seeks to parry opposing positions more rhetorically than substantively, and he also evidences rigid preconceptions, impervious to the experience of persons with a disability, that lead to self-reinforcing conclusions. Second, whereas he readily and admirably challenges conventional constructs in discussing poverty alleviation, he embraces them when considering disability. And third, although he clearly states that he expects his writing to spur concrete action with regard to poverty alleviation, when taken to task for the implications of his writing about disability, he resists engaging with consequences it may have. This is not only concerning for those who urge greater attention to dignitarian concerns but also raises questions about the manner in which he has applied his own utilitarian analysis. This article proceeds by first laying out the rationale for and essence of Singer’s argument that there is an obligation to do what one can to alleviate global poverty. In Part 2, it sets forth the foundations for his treatment of disability, culminating in his conclusion that, should parents wish, “killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.” Part 3 examines tensions between these two positions before concluding that Singer might better advance his goal of global poverty alleviation were he to approach disability with a blend of rigor, imagination, and concern for the impact of his work comparable to that which characterizes his treatment of poverty.
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The four chapters in this part, each in its own way, raise and begin to propose answers to the enormously challenging question of society’s responsibilities toward persons with disabilities when it comes to the provision of healthcare. Although all four are one in recognizing and documenting the all too abundant and profound ways in which persons with disabilities are disadvantaged (many of which are not obvious to persons whose lives are not touched by disability), they differ markedly in their proposals to rectify these problems.
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Taiwan and International Human Rights (Jerome A. Cohen, William P. Alford & Chang-fa Lo eds., 2019).
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This book tells a story of Taiwan’s transformation from an authoritarian regime to a democratic system where human rights are protected as required by international human rights treaties. There were difficult times for human rights protection during the martial law era; however, there has also been remarkable transformation progress in human rights protection thereafter. The book reflects the transformation in Taiwan and elaborates whether or not it is facilitated or hampered by its Confucian tradition. There are a number of institutional arrangements, including the Constitutional Court, the Control Yuan, and the yet-to-be-created National Human Rights Commission, which could play or have already played certain key roles in human rights protections. Taiwan’s voluntarily acceptance of human rights treaties through its implementation legislation and through the Constitutional Court’s introduction of such treaties into its constitutional interpretation are also fully expounded in the book. Taiwan’s NGOs are very active and have played critical roles in enhancing human rights practices. In the areas of civil and political rights, difficult human rights issues concerning the death penalty remain unresolved. But regarding the rights and freedoms in the spheres of personal liberty, expression, privacy, and fair trial (including lay participation in criminal trials), there are in-depth discussions on the respective developments in Taiwan that readers will find interesting. In the areas of economic, social, and cultural rights, the focuses of the book are on the achievements as well as the problems in the realization of the rights to health, a clean environment, adequate housing, and food. The protections of vulnerable groups, including indigenous people, women, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) individuals, the disabled, and foreigners in Taiwan, are also the areas where Taiwan has made recognizable achievements, but still encounters problems. The comprehensive coverage of this book should be able to give readers a well-rounded picture of Taiwan’s human rights performance. Readers will find appealing the story of the effort to achieve high standards of human rights protection in a jurisdiction barred from joining international human rights conventions.
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Taiwan has gone through a number of important stages in its modern history, including the 1945 resumption of governance by the Republic of China succeeding Japanese colonialism, the Nationalist central government’s 1949 move to Taiwan, the horrendous abuse of many fundamental rights during four decades of martial law, and the termination of martial law beginning 1987. The issues discussed in this chapter mostly concern the recent stages. They include: the gradual transition to a constitutional regime protecting human rights; the role of Confucian tradition in the transition process; human rights related institutional arrangements (including the Constitutional Court, the Control Yuan, and the yet-to be- created National Human Rights Commission); Taiwan’s adoption of human rights treaties through implementation legislation and constitutional interpretation; the roles of NGOs in human rights protection; and Taiwan’s problems relating to: civil and political rights (including the death penalty, personal liberty, freedoms of expression, privacy, and fair trial), economic, social, and cultural rights (including the rights to health, a clean environment, and adequate housing and food) and the protection of vulnerable groups (including indigenous people, women, LGBT individuals, the disabled, and foreigners). Thus this chapter offers background to other chapters in this book concerning Taiwan’s human rights performance.
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Taiwan’s early law (1980) regarding disability presumed a medical model—i.e., seeing disability as an individual problem rather than a societal responsibility. Facing considerable discrimination and inspired by the social model embodied elsewhere, including in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), citizen activists, including disabled persons organizations, have pressed for legislative reform. Following the earlier support of the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou for incorporation of the United Nations Human Rights Covenants into domestic law (owing to Taiwan’s being barred from formal accession), the Legislative Yuan in 2014 passed a bill designed to incorporate the CRPD into Republic of China (R.O.C) law. That measure not only retained all key provisions of the CRPD but also called on the Executive Yuan to conduct a comprehensive review of existing legal measures for compliance and pro-actively to engage persons with disabilities in implementing the new law, while also establishing innovative reporting and monitoring mechanisms intended to parallel the requirements of the CRPD. Much progress has been achieved but serious challenges remain regarding discrimination, especially with respect to employment and reasonable accommodations, while some scholars have questioned the suitability of a highly individual-focused rights-based model for Taiwanese society. Disabled persons organizations continue to play an active role both in policy and legal advocacy and in seeking to educate the public more broadly about disability.
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"This book studies ideological divisions within Chinese legal academia and their relationship to arguments about the rule of law. The book describes argumentative strategies used by Chinese legal scholars to legitimize and subvert China's state-sanctioned ideology. It also examines Chinese efforts to invent new, alternative rule of law conceptions. In addition to this descriptive project, the book advances a more general argument about the rule of law phenomenon, insisting that many arguments about the rule of law are better understood in terms of their intended and actual effects rather than as analytic propositions or descriptive statements. To illustrate this argument, the book demonstrates that various paradoxical, contradictory and otherwise implausible arguments about the rule of law play an important role in Chinese debates about the rule of law. Paradoxical statements about the rule of law, in particular, can be useful for an ideological project"--Page [4] of cover.
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William P. Alford, Editor’s Note, FOCUS: Disability Rights in China and in the World, 11 Frontiers of Law in China 1 (2016).
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Technology transfer concerns the efficient and equitable allocation of existing technology in the world. Such a transfer differs from the creation of new technology, even though it may enable further technological developments. The term technology transfer entered international law in the 1960s, though its precise definition remains contentious. Technology transfer has two dimensions. The first is technology as a catalyst for economic development. Technology transfer is widely believed to lead to higher economic growth. In the 1970s and 1980s, dependence theory — the view that integration into the world economy on capitalist terms would gradually worsen the balance of trade for developing countries — had many followers. This model of development emphasized political and economic independence through control of trade, capital, and technology flows. The second dimension concerns the policing of technology licenses by competition authorities, and the co-ordination of national competition policies relating to technology.
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This book focuses on professionals in China and asks whether developing countries have a fateful choice: to embrace Western models of professional organization as they now exist, or to set off on an independent path, adapting elements of ...
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William P. Alford, "Second Lawyers, First Principles": Lawyers, Rice-Roots Legal Workers, and the Battle Over Legal Professionalism in China, in Prospects for the Professions in China 48 (William P. Alford, Kenneth Winston & William C. Kirby eds., 2010).
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William P. Alford, Offenses Against the State in Chinese Law: Overview, in 4 The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History 249 (Stanley N. Katz ed., 2009).
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Falu Baozhang Jizhi Yanjiu [A Study of Legal Mechanisms for the Protection of Persons with Disabilities] (Liming Wang, Yu'e Ma & William P. Alford eds., Huaxia Pub. House 2008).
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William P. Alford, Of Lawyers Lost and Found: Searching for Legal Professionalism in the People's Republic of China, in Raising the Bar: The Emerging Legal Profession in East Asia 287 (William P. Alford ed., 2007).
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Raising the Bar is the first book-length study in English of this phenomenon.
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Raising the Bar: The Emerging Legal Profession in East Asia (William P. Alford ed., Harvard Univ. Press 2007).
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Raising the Bar is the first book-length study in English of this phenomenon.
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A great deal of discussion about freedom in the People's Republic of China has proceeded on certain assumptions about the role of the state and about law's place in helping define it. At the heart of these assumptions is the idea that the cause of freedom in China will best be advanced through the state's retrenchment and a concomitant ceding of power to non–state actors, particularly with respect to economic and social matters. This notion is perhaps most obvious in calls for the promotion of greater economic freedom via both the "privatization" of state– owned enterprise and an increasing reliance on market forces, but it also informs the view that such measures are or soon will be leading to a marked growth in political freedom. And it undergirds the conviction of most observers that what is termed the rise of civil society will perforce enhance personal freedom in China. As the noted Chinese scholar Liu Junning observed in a recent essay extolling Hayek, "almost all of those who shape public opinion in China are liberals [as] classical liberalism now dominates China's intellectual landscape." Law occupies a prominent position in this vision, being increasingly seen in both academic and policy circles as critical to the attainment for Chinese of fuller economic, political, and social freedoms. In part, the prominence accorded law is attributable to its perceived potential, however imperfectly realized to date in the PRC, to facilitate the above described transfer of power from state to society by limiting the spheres of life over which the former has authority and providing constraints as to the manner in which such authority is to be exercised. No less importantly, law is extolled for the vital role it has to play, once the state has receded, in establishing the proverbial "level playing field" on which a new society is to be grounded. In contrast to the avowedly political and highly particularistic manner in which the Chinese state historically reached into citizens' lives, law is commended for being facilitative, rather than determinative, providing a neutral framework through which citizens, each endowed with the same rights and each entitled to invoke the uniform procedural protection that formal adjudication is intended to provide, may work things out for themselves.
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Lionel Astor Sheridan, William P. Alford & Mary Ann Glendon, Legal Education, in Encyclopedia Britannica (2004).
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Maynard E. Pirsig, Mary Ann Glendon & William P. Alford, Legal Ethics, in Encyclopedia Britannica (2004).
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William P. Alford, The Legal Profession, in Encyclopedia Britannica (2004).
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William P. Alford, The More Law, The More...? Measuring Legal Reform in the People's Republic of China, in How Far Across the River? Chinese Policy Reform at the Millennium (Nicholas C. Hope, Dennis Tao Yang & Mu Yang Li eds., 2003).
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This book takes its defining theme from Deng Xiaopeng's famous metaphor for gradual reform: “feeling the stones to cross the river.” How far has China progressed in fording the river?
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Historical Studies of Chinese Law: A Bibliography of Materials in Chinese and Japanese Published Between 1988 and 1994 (William P. Alford & Nongji Zhang eds., Harv. L. Sch. 2003).
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William P. Alford, Area and International Studies: Law, in 2 International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences 711 (Neil J. Smelser & Paul B. Baltes eds., 2001).
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William P. Alford, At a Crossroad: The Challenge of Implementing Chinese Environmental Law, 3 Harv. China Rev. 10 (2001).
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Review of Recent Transformations in Korean Law and Society (Kyu Yoon ed., 2000).
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Review of Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve, by Thomas Carothers (1999).
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A Bibliographical Survey of Malaysian Legal Materials (William P. Alford, ed., Harvard Research Guides to the Legal Systems of East and Southeast Asia, 2000).
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Alford, William P. & Yuanyuan Shen, Limits of the Law in Addressing China's Environmental Dilemma, 16 Stan. Envtl. L. J. 125 (1997).
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William P. Alford, Making the World Safe for What? Intellectual Property Rights, Human Rights and Foreign Economic Policy in the Post-European Cold War World, 29 N.Y.U. J. Int'l L. & Pol. 135 (1997).
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A prevalent image of China, both historically and in recent times, has been that of a civilization spared the malady of too many lawyers that is said to beset the United States and growing numbers of other nations. For better or worse, so such thinking goes, China has sought to address its problems primarily through reliance upon morality, custom, kinship or politics, rather than formal legality, with the result that there has been relatively little need for individuals whose work lies in the law. No wonder that it was Shakespeare, rather than a Chinese author, who gave voice to the much-cited, if arguably misunderstood, call to “kill all the lawyers first.”
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" This ambitious, pioneering work makes available a wealth of new material.
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William P. Alford & Yuanyuan Shen, "Law is My Idol": John C.H. Wu and the Role of Legality and Spirituality in the Effort to Modernize China, in Essays in Honour of Wang Tieya 43 (Ronald St. John Macdonald ed., 1994).
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