Gautam Bhatia will explore how the Indian Constitution is a terrain of contestation between different—and often conflicting—visions of power. Gautam Bhatia is a Delhi-based author and lawyer at the Supreme Court of India. He is a well-known commentator on the Indian Constitution and its many lives in India today. Bhatia is the author of Offend, Shock, Or Disturb: Free Speech Under the Indian Constitution (Oxford, 2016) and The Transformative Constitution: A Radical Biography in Nine Acts (HarperCollins, 2019).  Program is co-sponsored by the Center for the Advanced Study of India, South Asia Center, the Center for Asian Law, and South Asian Law Students Association (SALSA).

Michael Davis, Senior Research Scholar, Weatherhead East Asia Institute, Columbia University Victoria Hui, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Norte Dame Jacques deLisle, Stephen A. Cozen Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania

Professor Margaret Lewis’s research focuses on law in China and Taiwan with an emphasis on criminal justice and human rights. Professor Lewis has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar at National Taiwan University, a visiting professor at Academia Sinica, a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Public Intellectuals Program Fellow with the National Committee on United States-China Relations, and a delegate to the US-Japan Foundation’s US-Japan Leadership Program. Her publications have appeared in a number of academic journals including the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, and Virginia Journal of International Law. She also co-authored the book Challenge to China: How Taiwan Abolished its Version of Re-Education Through Labor with Jerome A. Cohen.

Peking University Professor Fu Yulin will lead a roundtable discussion, in Chinese, on the implementation of announced judicial reforms to date, and what the future may hold for the Supreme Court’s reform program.

Scholars, jurists, and policy-makers in every major jurisdiction in Asia are debating, and sometimes reforming, the selection and appointment of judges, the role of specialized courts, the autonomy and accountability of the judiciary, the use of foreign law, and the legitimacy and capacity of judicial institutions to address political issues. This symposium brings together prominent jurists and leading academics from the U.S., China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to engage in a pathbreaking open dialogue on these and other issues critical to the successful operation of every nation’s legal system.  This program has been approved for 7.0 substantive CLE credits for Pennsylvania lawyers. CLE credit may be available in other jurisdictions as well. Attendees seeking CLE credit should bring separate payment in the amount of $280.00 ($140.00 public interest/non-profit attorneys) cash or check made payable to The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania.

A talk by Weixia Gu and Pasha Hsieh.  Co-sponsored by the Center for Asian Law, Center for East Asian Studies, Fels Policy Research Initiative, and the Center for the Study of Contemporary China.

As we mark the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 25th anniversary of the Bangkok Declaration, and nearly three decades since the People’s Republic of China officially accepted universal human rights, this symposium brings together leading experts to examine the state of human rights in China.