CENTER HISTORY AND MISSION

In 2009, Professor Setsuo Miyazawa, a senior legal sociologist and one of the world’s leading scholars of the Japanese legal system, and Professor Keith Hand, an expert on Chinese law and a new faculty member, began collaborating to offer courses and professional opportunities related to East Asia. They firmly believed that the law school’s historic strengths in the fields of international and comparative law, along with its central location in a major Pacific Rim business center, presented a unique opportunity to build UC Law SF into a new hub for teaching, research, and scholarly exchange on East Asian legal systems. After expanding the course curriculum on East Asia; establishing exchanges with prominent law schools and bar associations across the region; developing new student internship opportunities; and organizing many public events, Professors Miyazawa and Hand formally established the East Asian Legal Studies Program in 2015 In 2022, law school administrators granted the program new status as the Center for East Asian Legal Studies (CEALS).

The rise of China and continued rapid growth across the Pacific Rim present both vast opportunities and new challenges for the legal profession and the world. Legal education in the 21st century must prepare law students and legal scholars to grasp these opportunities and meet the challenges. With this objective in mind, the Center’s mission incorporates three closely related elements:

Building the law school into a leading Pacific Rim center for interdisciplinary research and exchange on East Asian legal systems; Advancing our understanding of the historic legal changes taking place across East Asia by promoting in-depth faculty and student research, collaborating with leading scholarly networks and professional institutions, and offering a diverse range of expert lectures and conferences to legal professionals in the San Francisco Bay Area; and Providing the next generation of law students with the knowledge and training to understand East Asian legal systems and legal cultures; work effectively with clients and counterparts in this dynamic region; and take full advantage of the growing opportunities for legal professionals interested in a global practice with an East Asia focus