by Anupam Chander

An award ceremony has the risk of being largely predictable, even if worthwhile. The presenter makes the usual remarks about the namesake of the award and the honoree, and the honoree is duly grateful. I was privileged to attend an award ceremony in Washington D.C. this week that well-exceeded the usual standard. The occasion was the award of the Henry J. Friendly Medal of the American Law Institute (ALI) presented by Chief Justice John Roberts to Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the ALI’s annual meeting in Washington D.C. earlier this week. The Medal is named in honor of the famed Second Circuit judge, who served on the bench from 1959 to 1986. Chief Justice Roberts observed that Judge Friendly has often been regarded as the most important United States jurist never to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Ray Lohier of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals spearheaded the nomination, and it was approved by acclamation of the American Law Institute’s Council. It was Chief Justice Roberts who approached the ALI to present the award. 

Chief Justice Roberts had himself clerked for Judge Friendly, as did a number of prominent members of the ALI, including Professors Bruce Ackerman and Ruth Wedgwood and Judge Merrick Garland. I have long admired Judge Friendly myself. When I clerked for Judge Jon O. Newman of the Second Circuit, his New York offices had once been the chambers of Judge Friendly himself. Given Judge Newman’s frugality and concern for the public fisc, I’m confident that we still had the old chairs and desks that Judge Friendly’s clerks used. I then went on to become an associate at the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton, which had been cofounded by Judge Friendly. 

Chief Justice Roberts uncovered letters between Justice Ginsburg and Judge Friendly—where she forwarded him, for his appraisal, an opinion (Norris v District of Columbia, 737 F.2d 1148 (D.C. Cir. 1984)) she had authored as then-Circuit Judge citing one of his precedents (Johnson v. Glick). Chief Justice Roberts reported that Judge Friendly had approved of her interpretation of his opinion and saw her as a rising star. The Chief also remarked on Justice Ginsburg’s quality of work—and mentioned her special interest in “jabots”—a term I had to look up. Jabots, for those like me who didn’t know, are the decorative collars, which Justice Ginsburg uses to accessorize her judicial robes (for more, see this Bustle article)

The level of respect and admiration for his senior colleague was palpable in the Chief Justice’s remarks. Inviting her to receive the award, Chief Justice Roberts joked that he was happy to participate in this effort “to increase your public profile.”

Justice Ginsburg’s address was quite humble. She picked up with the Chief’s joke. She explained the origin of her current “notoriety” as the work of a law student. It was a 2L at NYU who had apparently noticed some (perhaps unlikely) similarity between Justice Ginsburg and rapper Notorious B.I.G. Justice Ginsburg declared they were indeed alike—they both hailed from Brooklyn! Thus were born all manner of paraphernalia sporting her new moniker. She went on to describe the generational shift in opportunities that she had been afforded compared to the women of generation prior to hers (she did not mention the many opportunities in law she had been denied): “What is the difference between a garment worker in New York City and a Supreme Court Justice?” she riddled. She answered, “A generation.”

Justice Ginsburg also spoke of Judge Friendly, relaying an oral argument that she had attended at the Second Circuit in which Judge Friendly had asked a particularly penetrating question to the advocate, who happened to be her husband, Marty Ginsburg. 

In sharp contrast to the collegiality displayed by Justices Ginsburg and Roberts, the process of Supreme Court Justice confirmation is no longer characterized by collaboration. Justice Ginsburg lamented the recent politicization of the Supreme Court confirmation process. She noted that only three Senators voted no on her candidacy, while dozens of Senators voted no on more recent appointments. Furthermore, she noted that no Senator asked her to defend her role as a card-carrying member--and cofounder of the women’s rights project--of the ACLU.

This was my first meeting as a new member of the American Law Institute, the long-standing group of jurists, lawyers and academics that publishes the Restatements of Law and the Principles of Law that practitioners and judges often rely on to apply the law. The award ceremony perfectly encapsulates the spirit of bipartisan engagement that characterizes ALI. The ALI includes lawyers who generally respresent plantiffs, as well as lawyers who generally represent defendants. The ALI relies on civil discourse and the quality of argument to arrive at its answers for the significant questions it asks.

The UC Davis law faculty includes ALI members Dean Kevin R. Johnson and Professors Ashutosh Bhagwat, Gabriel "Jack" Chin, William S. Dodge, Floyd F. Feeney, Robert W. Hillman, Thomas W. Joo, and Leticia Saucedo, as well as Professors Emeriti Alan Brownstein, Carol S. Bruch, Joel C. Dobris, Daniel W. Fessler, Angela P. Harris, John B. Oakley, Rex R. Perschbacher, Edward H. Rabin, Daniel L. Simmons, and Bruce Wolk.

Editor's Note: The following is Professor Anupam Chander's "Letter from the Director" published in the California International Law Center's 2015-15 Annual Newsletter.

Dear Colleagues,

International and comparative law continues to thrive at UC Davis School of Law. I highlight here some recent news about our highly productive international and comparative law faculty, as well as news about the California International Law Center's plans for the upcoming year.

Professor Karima Bennoune was named the United Nations Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights. Her first report to the UN Human Rights Council can be viewed here. A second report on the intentional destruction of cultural heritage is available here. The Sacramento Bee featured her prize-winning book, Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here, which won the 2014 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. She is currently teaching a seminar where UC Davis law students help provide research for her United Nations reports.

Professor William Dodge, who joined our faculty last year after having served as the Honorable Roger J. Traynor Professor of Law at UC Hastings, continues his work as Co-Reporter for the American Law Institute's Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law: Jurisdiction and as a member of the State Department's Advisory Committee on International Law. His article" International Comity in American Law" was published last December in the Columbia Law Review.

I'm so pleased to announce that Professor Afra Afsharipour will serve as the Associate Director of the California International Law Center. She recently published The India Corporate Governance Handbook, a key reference tool in understanding Indian corporate regulations.

Professor Madhavi Sunder took up the position of Senior Associate Dean at UC Davis School of Law as Professor Vik Amar left to become Dean of the University of Illinois College of Law. We wish Professor Amar great success in Urbana-Champaign. Professor Sunder published The Luxury Economy and Intellectual Property, with Oxford University Press. Co-edited with Haochen Sun, Associate Professor of Law and Deputy Director of the LLM Program in Information Technology and Intellectual Property at the University of Hong Kong, and Barton Beebe, the John M. Desmarais Professor of Intellectual Property Law at New York University School of Law, the book comprehensively explores the rise of the luxury goods economy and the growing role of intellectual property in creating, sustaining, and regulating this economy.

I just returned from speaking in Brasilia last week and am off to Tokyo this coming week to speak before the Keidanren, the Japanese business federation, on issues of cross-border Internet regulation. I published a paper in the Emory Law Review with Uyen Le, Senior Research Fellow at the California International Law Center. I also authored a new paper, "The Racist Algorithm?," which is forthcoming in the Michigan Law Review. Professor Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli and I were pleased to receive a major grant from the Mellon Foundation for a Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series on "Surveillance Democracies?," which supported a lecture series during the 2015-2016 school year.

Professor Peter Lee was awarded the 2016 Distinguished Teaching Award, an honor bestowed to only one professor per year.

Just this month, Dean Kevin Johnson led some of our extraordinary immigration and refugee law faculty to a major UC Davis cosponsored conference on Migration and Asylum at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Professors Leticia Saucedo, Brian Soucek, Rose Cuison Villazor spoke at the conference, along with Dean Johnson. UC Davis law aluma Jihan Kahssay '12 also participated.

The Center also invited several speakers from across the world as part of our mission to educate King Hall on current international and comparative law matters. We were pleased to host distinguished international lawyers including Judge Seung Wha Chang, Member of the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization; Dr. Edward Kwakwa, Legal Counsel for the World Intellectual Property Organization; and Ms. Andrea Bjorklund, International Arbitration and Commercial Law Professor at McGill University. We hosted the Northern California International Law Scholars Works-In-Progress Workshop and the Conference of Asian Pacific American Law Faculty (CAPALF).

The Mellon Sawyer award that Professor Ravetto-Biagioli and I received, in collaboration with Professor Ken Goldberg at UC Berkeley, allowed us to host a year-long multidisciplinary seminar series to explore the tension between the surveillance state and democracy. As part of this seminar series, we invited several academics and practitioners with expertise in privacy law, encryption, and government surveillance. Such experts included Ben Wizner, the ACLU's Free Speech Director and attorney for Edward Snowden; Laura Donahue, Georgetown Law Professor and Director of Georgetown's Center on Privacy and Technology; and Helen Nissenbaum, Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, and Computer Science, and Director of the Information Law Institute, New York University. In addition, we co-hosted with the Mellon Initiative in Digital Cultures a symposium on drones titled "Eyes in The Skies: Drones and the Politics of Distance Warfare."

This fall we welcome Nida Siddiqui '16, who will serve as this year's Law Fellow at the California International Law Center. A former Student Fellow of the Center, Nida will aid in our efforts to educate and engage UC Davis students and the legal community at large on current international law issues, as well as work on international law research.

One highlight of this school year will be the 50th Anniversary UC Davis Law Review symposium with the theme of "Future Proofing Law: From DNA to Robots." We have a stellar lineup of confirmed speakers: California Supreme Court Justice Mariano Florentino Cuellar; Mark Lemley, Stanford University; Jane Bambauer, University of Arizona; Julie Cohen, Georgetown University; Paul Ohm, Georgetown University; Ryan Calo, University of Washington; Mary Anne Franks, University of Miami; Molly Van Houweling, UC Berkeley; Dan Burk, UC Irvine; Hank Greely, Stanford University; Arti Rai, Duke University; I. Glenn Cohen, Harvard University; Laura DeNardis, American University; Nancy Leong, University of Denver; Margot Kaminski, Ohio State University; Mira Burri, University of Lucerne, Switzerland; Gary Marchant, Arizona State University; Mario Biagioli, UC Davis; Lisa Ikemoto, UC Davis; Albert Lin, UC Davis; Peter Lee, UC Davis; and Elizabeth Joh, UC Davis.

None of our work would have been possible without the support of our wonderful staff-Administrative Assistant Nina Marie Bell, Senior Research Fellow Uyên Lê, and Student Fellows Varun Aery '16 and Nida Siddiqui '16. We are also grateful to support from the staff at UC Davis School of Law, including Pamela Wu, Gia Hellwig, and Sam Sellers. We also depended on collaborations with student organizations including King Hall International Law Association, King Hall Intellectual Property Law Organization, and the Journal of International Law & Policy. We also were delighted to co-sponsor events with the Aoki Center for Critical Race & Nation Studies, UC Davis School of Law International Programs, Sacramento Chapter of the World Affairs Council, the State Bar of California's International Law Section of the ABA's Section of International Law, UC Berkeley's Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium, UC Davis Office of the Provost & Executive Vice Chancellor, Compliance & Policy, and UC Davis Information and Education Technology.

The California International Law Center is committed to increasing King Hall's contribution to the world in developing an understanding both the possibilities and challenges international law poses to our community and values. We thank you for your support and welcome your participation in our activities!

Sincerely,

Anupam Chander

Director, California International Law Center, and

Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor

UC Davis School of Law

Yale University Press has just published The Electronic Silk Road: How the Web Binds the World Together in Commerce. The book has been hailed as a "tour de force" by leading trade economist Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University, a "must read" by Senator Chris Coons, and "engaging" and "important" by Ricardo Ramírez-Hernández, Chair of the Appellate Body, World Trade Organization.

The hardcover is available from Amazon here, as is a Kindle version.

Former World Trade Organization Director-General Michael Moore, currently New Zealand's Ambassador to the United States, tweeted: "What am I reading? "The Electronic Silk Road" by @AnupamChander explains essential issues for modern trade agenda."

The book has received extensive advance praise from key figures in international law and economics.

• "An extraordinarily lucid and colorful description of the way cybertrade is changing global commerce -- and global society. Chander proposes realistic legal arrangements that can secure the Web’s benefits and avert its perils. This is an important book."—Michael Reisman, Yale Law School
• "The world of commerce has changed for services. A masterly analysis of the implications of this development, this book is a tour de force."— Jagdish Bhagwati, University Professor, Columbia University
• “A must read for those interested in globalization in the information age and the public policy challenges, opportunities, and pitfalls that will result. Anupam Chander offers an insightful primer on international cyberlaw and a thoughtful set of proposals for adapting to a changed world.” —Chris Coons, United States Senator
• “This engaging book makes a powerful argument for embracing trade, without displacing law, along the new digital trade routes. Indeed, it recognizes law as crucial to promoting both trade and consumer protection. This is an important contribution to thinking about the international legal order.”—Ricardo Ramírez-Hernández, Chair of the Appellate Body, World Trade Organization
• “Chander examines how international trade is ordering human rights and free expression in the digital age. Virtual borders and transnational corporations are here to stay, and Chander’s notion of ‘net-work’ offers us a sobering analysis of the dangers, and the possibilities.”—Deji Olukotun, PEN American Center
• “Chander accentuates what is often forgotten--the importance of law underlying the digital evolution. Highly readable and enjoyable, The Electronic Silk Road is a piece of sound intellectual work, which is handsomely written.”—Mira Burri, University of Bern
• “Anupam Chander takes us on a fascinating journey, raising provocative questions on how to balance competing global and local interests when managing new trade dynamics. Anyone interested in the digital transformation of commerce should consider carefully Chander’s insights.”—Mark Wu, Harvard Law School

UCLA Asian Pacific American Law Journal

Volume 17

Call for Submissions: 

Tributes in Remembrance of UC Davis Law Professor Keith Aoki

The UCLA Asian Pacific American Law Journal is currently seeking original pieces in tribute of UC Davis Law Professor Keith Aoki for publication in Volume 17.  Professor Aoki was an activist and prolific legal scholar, having contributed to a variety of fields, including Asian American issues, critical race, property, local law, immigration, and intellectual property. Pieces may reflect upon Professor Aoki's impact in these fields of law or upon his personal impact and legacy as an artist, professor, scholar, friend, and mentor.

Submissions should be written in the form of a short editorial. Relevant references and connections to Asian Pacific American issues are highly encouraged, such as, but not limited to, critical responses centering on themes of affirmative action, higher education admissions, the model minority myth, race and legal education/academia, etc. 

Please limit responses to 2,000 words, double-spaced with 1-inch margins, in 12 point Times New Roman font. However, the Editorial Board will not enforce a strict word limit. Submissions must be e-mailed in Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF format to apalj@lawnet.ucla.edu with Vol. 17 Submission: Tribute to Keith Aoki in the subject line.  Any footnotes should follow The Bluebook Uniform System of Citation.  Please submit responses no later than December 1st, 2011. If you have questions regarding the submission or slating process, please e-mail apalj@lawnet.ucla.edu.

Established in 1991, the UCLA Asian Pacific American Law Journal (APALJ) is one of only two law journals in the nation that focuses exclusively on the legal, social, and political issues affecting Asian Pacific American communities.  APALJ provides a forum for legal scholars, practitioners, and students to discuss emerging issues affecting South Asian, Southeast Asian, East Asian, and Pacific Islander communities in the United States.  APALJ publishes written work regarding these issues for dissemination to the general public.  Through publication, APALJ hopes to move Asian American jurisprudence in a direction that will aid Asian Pacific Americans in their struggles.

Keith would have been 56 today.  The UC Davis Law Review will publish a major symposium on his work in the Spring, as will the University of Oregon Law Review.  The sketch below is by Sam Sellers--and accompanied a beautiful set of posters delivered to Keith in his last days.

Should dictators fear, or welcome, the Internet?  I grapple with this question in a new essay, Jasmine Revolutions, forthcoming in the Cornell Law Review.  The draft of the paper is available here.

Here is the abstract for the paper:

Will the Internet help topple tyrants, or will it help further cement their control? Prominent skeptics challenge the notion that the Internet will help rid the world of dictators. They suggest that the Internet will simply serve as a new opiate of the masses, or worse, will assist autocrats in manipulating popular opinion. I defend the liberalizing promise of cyberspace. Where others have set out the value of the Internet to dissidents, I answer the main critiques of that position - that Internet activism is futile, that the Internet is simply the new opiate of the masses, and that autocrats will benefit more from the Internet than dissidents. I argue that dictators have revealed their own appraisals of the Internet: when threatened, they shut it down. Tyrants today fear the Internet more than they benefit from it. This summer’s events again confirmed this truth: On the day when the rebels marched into Tripoli, they restored Libya to the Internet.

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Jamie Boyle has made available a book he produced remembering our UC Davis colleague Keith Aoki, available for $10.05 (at cost).

Keith Aoki: 1955-2011 Life as the Art of Kindness, A Remembrance (Paperback)

The book, produced by Duke Law Professor Jamie Boyle, with Duke's Jennifer Jenkins and Balfour Smith, offers remembrances of UC Davis Law Professor and graphic artist Keith Aoki, who passed away from a terminal illness this year. There are remembrances from John Perry Barlow and countless law professors across the country, in fields such as intellectual property and critical race theory. The book includes a dazzling array of Twitter messages, including one from Larry Lessig, on the day of Keith's passing. And it includes some great cartoons done by Keith, as well as art from his early years. A beautiful tribute from a few of the many who loved Keith.

After three years of hard work (see, e.g., here and here) and a lot of fun (see, e.g., here), you have earned your right to walk across the stage of the Mondavi Center. We toast your achievements thus far, and look forward to your accomplishments in the law and in life in the years to come.

Congratulations, Class of 2011!