Center for Chinese Legal Studies | Columbia Law School
Faculty
In addition to the center’s director, Benjamin Liebman, numerous Columbia faculty are actively involved in research and teaching about China. For example, during the fall semester of 2009, six senior Columbia faculty traveled to China to participate in conferences; to advise on developing tort law; and to help formulate international policy. The center is a global leader in working with law schools in China, and Columbia Law School faculty have worked closely with law schools in China to develop public interest law and clinical legal education.
Faculty
Mark Barenberg
Professor of Law
Professor Barenberg’s research and teaching focus on the impact of globalization on the enforcement of labor rights, including workplace conditions and regulations in China. He served as an independent expert for the International Labor Organization on the issue of corporate codes of conduct in China. He has worked with NGOs that monitor labor rights compliance in China, and drafted briefs and petitions on U.S. legislation and treaties regulating U.S.-China trade relations. Full Biography
R. Randle Edwards
Walter Gellhorn Professor Emeritus of Law
Professor Edwards taught at Columbia from 1973 to 2002, and was director of the Center for Chinese Legal Studies from its creation in 1983 until his retirement. He served as chairman of the Committee on Legal Education Exchange with China from 1983-91. He has published numerous articles on China's criminal law, its practice of international law, and Chinese legal history. Full Biography
Curtis J. Milhaupt, ’89
Parker Professor of Comparative Corporate Law; Fuyo Professor of Japanese Law; Director, Center for Japanese Legal Studies
Professor Milhaupt, an expert on Japanese law and on comparative corporate law, currently is conducting research on the evolution of China's capital markets. During the fall semester of 2006, he was in residence in Beijing. Full Biography
Katharina Pistor
Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law
Katharina Pistor, Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law, has published extensively about legal development and economic transformation in the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and on China. She also participated in a comparative study on "The Role of Law and Legal Institutions in Asian Economic Development,” which included countries as diverse as China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, and India. She has co-authored several recent papers on China with Chenggang Xu of the London School of Economics, including most recently “Governing Stock Markets in Transition Economies: Lessons From China.” Full Biography
Timothy Wu
Professor of Law
Professor Timothy Wu, who is of Taiwanese origin, has written and spoken on China’s distinct internet policies and on the East Asian approach to intellectual property. He currently is conducting research on the evolution of the internet in China. Full Biography
Madeleine Zelin
Professor of Modern Chinese History; Director, East Asian National Resource Center at Columbia University
Professor Madeleine Zelin, is professor of Modern Chinese History, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Department of History, and is director of the East Asian National Resource Center. Professor Zelin specializes in modern legal history and the role of law in the Chinese economy. She has written widely on Chinese legal history and the complex forces shaping modern China. Her latest book, The Merchants of Zigong, Industrial Enterprise in Early Modern China, is a study of an advanced industrial community in southern Sichuan from the 18th century to the early 20th century. Professor Zelin teaches courses on Chinese legal history. Full Biography
Adjunct Faculty
Owen D. Nee Jr., ’73
Lecturer-in-Law, Columbia Law School; of counsel, Greenberg Traurig, LLP
Professor Nee was founder of the China practice at Coudert Brothers, which was the first foreign law firm to establish offices in Beijing and Hong Kong. For more than 25 years, Professor Nee was based in Greater China, principally in Hong Kong but also in Beijing and Shanghai. He returned to the United States in 2005. Professor Nee was named in the 2008 Asialaw Leading Lawyers survey as “one of the most highly acclaimed legal experts in the Asia-Pacific region” in the areas of capital markets and corporate finance. He also has been named as one of New York’s “Super Lawyers” in the most recent publication of the list. Professional Biography
Thomas Kellogg
Lecturer-in-Law, Columbia Law School; Program Director, Open Society Foundations
Thomas Kellogg is Advisor to the President and Program Director for China and Northeast Asia at the Open Society Foundations in New York. He has worked for a wide range of non-governmental organizations in the United States, Asia, and the Middle East, focusing on human rights, rule of law, and civil society development. He has written widely on legal reform in China, and has lectured on Chinese law at a number of universities in the United States and in Asia. Before joining the Open Society Foundations, Kellogg was a senior fellow at the China Law Center at Yale Law School; prior to that, he worked as a researcher in the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch. He is a 2003 graduate of the Harvard Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. Professional Biography