Keynote Speaker – John Owen Haley (Opening Speaker)

@7:30pm, October 13, 2016 – Event Page

John Owen HaleyPhoto_John Owen Haley

Professor Haley is a leading comparative law scholar, best known for his research on Japanese law. Professor Haley served as the Garvey, Schubert and Barer Professor of Law and International Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he taught from 1974 to 2000.  In 2000 he joined the Washington University in St. Louis law faculty, where he held two chairs, first as the Wiley B. Rutledge Professor of Law and subsequently the William R. Orthwein Distinguished Professor of Law (now emeritus). From 2002 to 2007, he served as the director of the Whitney R. Harris Institute for Global Legal Studies from 2002-07. From 2010 to 2015 he was Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University. He recently returned to the University of Washington as a visiting professor of law. He also has taught and lectured internationally in Australia, China, Colombia, Japan, Germany, Korea, Singapore, and Thailand. In November 2011 he was honored by the National Taiwan University College of Law as the Fourth Herbert Han-Pao Ma Distinguished Lecturer. In 2012 he was awarded the Japanese imperial honor of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Bars with Neck Ribbon for his contributions to Japanese legal studies.

His numerous publications related to Japan and comparative law more generally cover issues ranging from litigation to legal history. His 1991 book, Authority without Power: Law and the Japanese Paradox, and his 1978 article, “The Myth of the Reluctant Litigant,” are considered leading works in the field. Law’s Political Foundations: Rivers, Rifles, Rice, and Religion (Edward Elgar Pub. Co., 2016) is his most recent publication. He is also the author or co-author of two casebooks, now in their second editions:  Fundamentals of Transnational Litigation: The United States, Canada, Japan, and the European Union (New Providence, N.J.: LexisNexis, 2014) and John Henry Merryman, David S. Clark & John O. Haley. eds., Contemporary Civil Law Tradition: Europe, Latin America, and East Asia (2nd ed., Lexis/Nexis, 2015) with its companion volume, published in 2010, Comparative Law: Historical Development of the Civil Law Tradition in Europe, Latin America, and East Asia.