EASC Colloquium

EAST ASIAN COLLOQUIUM (Presented by the East Asian Studies Center)
PRESENTER: Veronica L. Taylor (School of Regulation, Justice, and Diplomacy, Australian National University)
TOPIC: “Whose Legal Empowerment? Donor-Funded Legal Aid and Experiential Learning in China”
DATE: Friday, March 4
TIME: 12:00 p.m. - 1:15 p.m.
LOCATION: Ballantine Hall 004

(Light refreshments will be served.  You are also welcome to bring your own lunch.)

This talk presents the results of a three-year project funded by the U.S. State Department in which we delivered Legal Aid funding and training in three impoverished regions in China: rural Hunan, rural Chongqing, and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Alongside the project, we surveyed 1,800 households about their attitudes to rule of law and their experiences of family, land, labor, and personal injury disputes. This is the most robust evaluation of a rule of law project conducted in China to date. On the basis of these results, we point to some important paradoxes in the way that donor legal assistance is designed and delivered and explain how we changed our project design to better accommodate local conditions.

Veronica L. Taylor is the Director of the School of Regulation, Justice, and Diplomacy at Australian National University (ANU) and Professor in the Regulatory Institutions Network (RegNet) at ANU. She is also an Affiliate Professor of Law and Senior Advisor to the Asian Law Center at the University of Washington, where she was the Center Director from 2001 to 2010.  In 2010 she was the inaugural Hague Visiting Professor in Rule of Law at The Hague and the Van Vollenhoven Institute, University of Leiden.

For more information about any upcoming event, please contact:

East Asian Studies Center
Indiana University
Memorial Hall West 207
1021 East Third Street
Bloomington, IN 47405-7005
(812) 855-3765easc@indiana.edu