Scholar in torts, comparative law publishes book on Chinese law, article on slow WHO pandemic response

Professor Chenglin Liu has completed two new and exciting projects of interest to lawyers and legal educators.

A torts professor on the faculty of St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas, Professor Liu kindly joined my Comparative Law class via Zoom in the spring to talk about coronavirus legal issues and public health regulation in the People's Republic of China.  His visit generated more discussion and questions than we had time for.

Professor Liu has now completed a landmark book, Chinese Law in Context (CAP 2021) (Amazon).  The publisher's précis reports:

Chinese Law in Context provides a unique perspective on the Chinese legal system. It first offers insight into Chinese legal history and the impact of Confucianism. Then, by examining significant scandals and corruption during the past two decades, the book analyzes constitutional law, property law, and tort law from a comparative perspective. It also covers food and drug safety laws and regulations, which are rarely addressed in other works but are increasingly critical in the context of U.S.-China bilateral trade relations.

Prof. Liu

A teacher's manual is forthcoming.

Professor Liu also has published a new article relevant to the pandemic, The World Health Organization: A Weak Defender Against Pandemics.  Consistently with Professor Liu's expertise in tort law, the article contemplates causation as between WHO management of the coronavirus and responsibility for its impact.  Here is the abstract:

Why did the World Health Organization (WHO) not act in a timely fashion to declare the coronavirus outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC)? If it had done so, could the United States have heeded the warning and controlled the spread of the virus? Is the WHO’s delay a factual cause of the calamities that the United States has suffered? This article addresses these questions. Part I examines the development of the WHO and its governance mechanism, major powers and limits, and past achievements and failures. It also explores how the WHO responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and what could have been done—but was not done—in the early stages. Part II analyzes why the United States failed to effectively respond to the COVID-19 public health crisis. Part III concludes that the WHO did not, and in the future will not, have the power and courage to make a prompt PHEIC declaration because of institutional constraints. However, the WHO’s delay in acting was not a factual cause of the harm suffered in the United States because the Trump Administration would not have acted differently even if the WHO issued the PHEIC warning swiftly.

The article appears in 28:2 Virginia Journal of Social Policy and Law (2021).

Experts enrich comparative law class

Jarosiński

Teaching Comparative Law is everything that makes teaching great.  It's an impossible job, because no one is expert in law the world over, so the course can be daunting to teachers and students alike.  But the challenge is best undertaken as an opportunity to explore.  The joy of teaching Comparative Law for me and my wife, who serves as a law librarian embedded in the course, is that every time, current events and our students' range of interests lead us down new paths.

We wrestle with the problem of what we don't know by consulting experts.  This semester, as in past semesters, we were privileged to have had our class enriched by the knowledge and experience of some stars in legal practice and academics.  In order of appearance...

Liu

Attorney Wojciech Jarosiński, LL.M. (on this blog), of the Maruta law firm, stayed up late to join us from Warsaw, Poland.  To give us the perspective of a lawyer working in the civil law tradition, he led the class in examining judicial reception of a U.S. punitive damages award in Poland, and then in considering common law and civil law differences in the context of transnational contracting.

Professor Chenglin Liu, St. Mary’s University School of Law, joined from post-freeze Texas to talk about the Chinese response to covid-19.  Professor Liu wrote about the Chinese response to SARS in 2005 in a work that the pandemic rendered newly salient.  A fellow torts teacher, Professor Liu also indulged student questions around U.S. states' suits against the PRC and the implications for Biden Administration diplomacy.

Reda

Professor Danya Reda, UMass Law, treated our class to an introduction to Islamic Law.  Also a fellow torts teacher, Professor Reda teaches an upper-level class on Islamic Law.  Before returning to the United States full time, Professor Reda taught at Peking University School of Transnational Law. Her research examines court reform in global perspective.

Mnisi Weeks

Professor Sindiso Mnisi Weeks, UMass Boston, led the class in a lively discussion of South Africa.  She generously shared her latest research findings on marriage and land rights in customary and contemporary law.  Besides a doctoral degree from Oxford, Professor Mnisi Weeks holds a law degree from the University of Cape Town, home to the renowned Centre for Comparative Law in Africa.  She serves UMass Boston in the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development.

Wortham

Professor Leah Wortham, Columbus School of Law, Catholic University of America, joined us to talk about the unfolding crisis over judicial independence in Poland.  With Professor Fryderyk Zoll, Jagiellonian University, Professor Wortham published the definitive treatment of the subject in 2019.  The matter has become only more complicated and more concerning, both within Poland and between Poland and the EU, in the years since.

Our thanks to Attorney Jarosiński and Professors Liu, Reda, Mnisi Weeks, and Wortham for contributing to a stellar semester's experience.  Watch this blog for a report in May on the students' final papers.