Harvard Law School and Stanford Law School jointly hosted the third annual Harvard-Stanford International Junior Faculty Forum in October, bringing together 13 of the world’s most innovative junior legal scholars from around the world to present their work. This year’s forum was held at Stanford.

“This – the third session of the Forum – was the best yet,” said Bill Alford ’77, conference organizer, Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law and Vice Dean for the Graduate Program and International Studies at HLS. “Discussion was intense, of a high quality and, with scholars from five continents taking part, reflective of a range of perspectives.”

“We are beginning also to see the Forum take on a life of its own,” he added. “Senior and junior scholars who met in previous sessions have stayed in contact and continued to comment on work in progress and otherwise build community.”

The idea behind the conference is to “stimulate exchange of ideas and research, among younger scholars in the academy, from all parts of the world; and to encourage younger scholars in their work,” organizers Lawrence Friedman of Stanford and Alford wrote in a call for abstracts in 2009. “We live today in a global community‐‐ especially a global legal community‐‐ and it is important to develop legal scholarship on a transnational basis.”

Junior scholars—those with less than seven years of experience, or whose last degree was earned less than ten years ago—were invited to submit an abstract; then a distinguished jury of senior legal scholars from across the globe, including Alford and HLS Professor of Law Grainne de Burca, selected the papers to be presented and served as commentators at the conference. Out of the 206 abstracts that were submitted, the jury selected 51 to be completed as final papers. The authors of 11 of those papers were invited to the conference.

“We’re immensely grateful to our deans, to our judges, and to the junior scholars whose scholarship made this all possible.” Alford said. “The Forum entails much work but it is enormously fulfilling and, we think, a valuable service by HLS in fostering more of a global community of scholars.”

Invited authors included:

  • Moeen Cheema, Australian National University College of Law: ‘Rule of Law’ or ‘Rule of Difference’?: Deconstructing the Islamization of Pakistan’s Law
  • Paul Copeland/Beryl ter Haar, University of Manchester/Leiden University: Busting the myth that European soft coordination methods create no “ripples” in national legal orders
  • Ming Du, Chinese University of Hong Kong: The Role of Science Before the World Trade Court
  • Adriana Garcia/Ana Fierro, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico: Design Matters: The Mexican Administrative Courts’ Case
  • Robert H. George, Jesus College, Oxford University: Relocation Disputes: An Analysis of Practitioners’ Approaches in England and New Zealand
  • Daphna Kepeliuk, Radzyner School of Law, Herzliya: The Repeat Appointment Factor: Exploring Decision Patterns of Elite Investments Arbitrators
  • Joshua Kleinfeld, Goethe University, Frankfurt: The Concept of Evil in American and German Criminal Punishment
  • Mariana Mota Prado, University of Toronto Law School: Institutional Bypass: An Alternative for Development Reform
  • Dan W. Puchniak, National University of Singapore: Japan’s Love for Derivative Actions: Revisiting Irrationality as a Rational Explanation for Shareholder Litigation
  • Mario G.  Schapiro, University of São Paulo: Administrative Governance, Institutional Dynamics and Industrial Financing in Brazil: New Parameters, Old Problems
  • Michael C. Schouten, Duisenberg School of Finance: The Mechanisms of Voting Efficiency

In addition to Alford and de Burca, judges for the 2010 Forum included:

  • Abdullahi An Naim, Emory University School of Law
  • Sergio López Ayllón, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico
  • Anupam Chander, UC Davis School of Law
  • Seung Wha Chang, Seoul National University
  • Eric Feldman, University of Pennsylvania Law School
  • Vincenzo Ferrari, University of Milan
  • Richard Ford, Stanford Law School
  • Gillian Hadfield, USC School of Law
  • Larry Helfer, Duke University School of Law
  • Deborah Hensler, Stanford Law School
  • Helen Irving, University of Sydney Law School
  • Mark Lemley, Stanford Law School
  • Stewart Macaulay, University of Wisconsin Law School
  • Mavis Maclean, Oxford University
  • Jenny Martinez, Stanford Law School
  • Rogelio Perez Perdomo, Universidad Metropolitana, Venezuela
  • Helen Stacy, Stanford Law School
  • Eric Talley, UC Berkeley School of Law
  • Xingzhong Yu, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Abstracts for the 2011 Forum (which will be held at Harvard November 10-12) are due on January 17, 2011.