Rule of Law
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This talk will analyze the evolution of lawfare, what Jeremy Bentham called "an irregular system of warfare." Meierhenrich introduces lawfare as a conceptually and analytically distinct type of warfare, and a political strategy not previously theorized in any systematic fashion. In his conceptualization, lawfare is a revolutionary strategy for broadcasting power, by which he means a strategy aimed at the systematic and comprehensive overhaul of the foundations of politics and society. This strategy comprises, inter alia, constitutional enactments, ordinary legislation, presidential decrees, and other regulatory instruments. Based on evidence from cases, Meierhenrich illustrates the economy with which the strategy of lawfare may be used and the ingenuity that it requires. Restating an influential aphorism, he shows how law made the state, and the state made law. By so doing, he explains why this irregular system of warfare stands in much higher favor with men in general than that which is carried on by open force -- illustrating the dark side of democracy and the rule of law.

About the speaker:

Jens Meierhenrich is Assistant Professor of Government and of Social Studies at Harvard University, where he is also a Faculty Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He recently served as the Carlo Schmid Fellow in Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and has previously worked with Luis Moreno Ocampo, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Professor Meierhenrich is the author of a genocide trilogy, forthcoming from Princeton University Press, comprising "The Rationality of Genocide," "The Structure of Genocide," and "The Culture of Genocide." His book "The Legacies of Law" on the function of legal norms and institutions in the transition to - and from - apartheid, is currently under review. Meierhenrich's publications also include a series of articles on comparative and international law and politics. Work in progress includes a book on judicial responses to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, a comparative analysis of international courts and tribunals, and a long-term project on state formation and state collapse. He has conducted extensive field research in several international organizations as well as in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

Jens Meierhenrich was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he earned a D.Phil. in politics and international relations.

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Jens Meierhenrich Assistant Professor of Government and of Social Studies Speaker Harvard University
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About the talk:

Are property rights obtained through dubious means forever tainted with original sin or can rightholders make their ill-gotten gains legitimate by doing good works? Using an experiment embedded in a survey of 1600 residents of conducted in Russia in October 2006, I find that the original sin of an illegal privatization is difficult to expunge, but that businesspeople can improve the legitimacy of property rights by doing good works, such as providing public goods.

About the speaker:

Timothy Frye is a Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. His research and teaching interests are in comparative politics and political economy with a focus on the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He is the author of Brokers and Bureaucrats: Building Markets in Russia, (Michigan Press 2000), which won the 2001 Hewett Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. He has published articles on property rights, the rule of law, protection rackets, economic reform, presidential power, and trade liberalization. Current projects include a book manuscript on the politics of economic reform in 25 postcommunist countries from 1990-2002 and articles on property rights and the rule of law drawing on surveys of business elites and the mass public in Russia.

Timothy Frye received his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in 1997. He has an MIA degree from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and a BA in Russian language and literature from Middlebury College.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREES), under Title VI of the Department of Education.

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Timothy Frye Professor of Political Science Speaker Columbia University
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Robert R. Amsterdam, founding partner of the international law firm Amsterdam & Peroff, is counsel to the former Yukos head and political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky. For more than 25 years, Mr. Amsterdam has represented corporations and investors in a variety of emerging markets lacking in rule of law, such as Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Guatemala, overseeing complex commercial litigation and advising on political risk. He has delivered speeches before the Carnegie Endowment, the Cato Institute, Georgetown University, University College London, and Chatham House. He has published numerous opinion articles on energy politics and law in the Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, the National Law Journal, the Guardian, and the Independent, among other media. Mr. Amsterdam maintains a blog at www.robertamsterdam.com and is working on a forthcoming book.

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Robert Amsterdam Speaker
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Abhijit Banerjee is the Ford Foundation Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, director of the Poverty Action Lab, and past president of the Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis and Development (BREAD).

Banerjee received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1988, and has taught at Princeton and Harvard before joining the MIT faculty in 1996. In 2001, he was the recipient of the Malcolm Adeshesiah Award, and was awarded the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal in 2000. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been a Guggenheim Fellow and Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. He is coeditor with Roland Benabou and Dilip Mookherjee of Understanding Poverty and, with Philippe Aghion, coauthor of Volatility and Growth. His areas of research are development economics, the economics of financial markets, and the macroeconomics of developing countries.

Sponsored by the Program on Global Justice, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

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Abhijit Banerjee Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Director of the Poverty Action Lab Speaker
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If the twentieth century is remembered as a century of war, Asia is certainly central to that story. In Northeast Asia, where issues of historical injustices seem to have generated a vicious circle of accusation and defense, overcoming historical animosities has become one of the most important issues for the future of the region.

Last year, the Yomiuri Shimbun, the largest daily paper in Japan, conducted an unprecedented year-long project analyzing the responsibility of Japanese leaders in Pacific war of World War II. The results of the project were published in August in the newspaper and then in a book that was published, both in Japanese and English in late 2006. Mr. Tennichi will discuss the project and the paper's findings. The newspaper articles can be found at Daily Yomiuri.

In 2003, Shorenstein APARC hosted a conference on issues of historical injustice in Korea. The conference produced a book, released in November 2006, titled Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience. Our director, Gi-Wook Shin and Chunghee Sarah Soh, who wrote one of the chapters of the book, will present their research in the second panel.

2:15 - 3:45 Panel One

"Who was Responsible?: From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor"

Presenter:

Takahiko Tennichi, editorial writer, Yomiuri Shimbun

Commentator:

Mark Peattie, visiting scholar, Shorenstein APARC

4:00 - 5:30 Panel Two

"Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience"

Panelists:

Chunghee Sarah Soh, professor, anthropology, San Francisco State

Gi-Wook Shin, director, Shorenstein APARC and associate professor, Sociology, Stanford University

Commentator:

Charles Burress, interim bureau chief, East Bay bureau, San Francisco Chronicle

You can read the Financial Times review of the Yomiuri Shimbun book at Financial Times Review

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Takahiko Tennichi editorial writer Speaker Yomiuri Shimbun
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Visiting Scholar
Peattie_web.jpg PhD

Mark R. Peattie was a visiting scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was a professor of history emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and was the John A. Burns Distinguished Visiting Professor of History at the University of Hawai'i in 1995.

Peattie was a specialist in modern Japanese military, naval, and imperial history. His current research focused on the historical context of Japanese-Southeast Asian relations. He was also directing a pioneering and international collaborative effort of the military history of the study of the Sino-Japanese war of 1937–45 being sponsored by the Asia Center at Harvard University.

He is editor, with Peter Duus and Ramon H. Myers, of the Japanese Wartime Empire, 1937–1945 (Princeton University Press, 1996). Peattie is the author of the Japanese Colonial Empire: The Vicissitudes of Its Fifty-Year History (Tokyo: Yomiuri Press, 1996).

He coauthored, with David Evans, Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887–1941 (Naval Institute Press, 1997), winner of a 1999 Distinguished Book Award of the Society for Military History. A sequel, Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909–1941, was published by the Naval Institute Press in 2001.

Peattie is also the author of the monograph A Historian Looks at the Pacific War (Hoover Essays in Public Policy, 1995).

Peattie was a reader for Columbia University, University of California, University of Hawai'i, Stanford University, University of Michigan, and U.S. Naval Institute Presses.

Peattie frequently served as lecturer in the Stanford University Continuing Studies Program and in the Stanford Alumni Travel Program.

He was named an associate in research at the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University from 1982 to 1993.

He was a member of the U.S. Information Agency from 1955 to 1968 with service in Cambodia (1955–57), in Japan (Sendai, Tokyo, Kyoto, 1958–67), and in Washington, D.C. (1967–68).

Peattie held a PhD in Japanese history from Princeton University.

Mark Peattie Commentator
Chunghee Sarah Soh professor of anthropology Speaker San Francisco State University
Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall E301
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
(650) 724-8480 (650) 723-6530
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor of Sociology
William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea
Professor, by Courtesy, of East Asian Languages & Cultures
Gi-Wook Shin_0.jpg PhD

Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in the Department of Sociology, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the founding director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) since 2001, all at Stanford University. In May 2024, Shin also launched the Taiwan Program at APARC. He served as director of APARC for two decades (2005-2025). As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, democracy, migration, and international relations.

In Summer 2023, Shin launched the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), which is a new research initiative committed to addressing emergent social, cultural, economic, and political challenges in Asia. Across four research themes– “Talent Flows and Development,” “Nationalism and Racism,” “U.S.-Asia Relations,” and “Democratic Crisis and Reform”–the lab brings scholars and students to produce interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, policy-relevant, and comparative studies and publications. Shin’s latest book, The Four Talent Giants, a comparative study of talent strategies of Japan, Australia, China, and India to be published by Stanford University Press in the summer of 2025, is an outcome of SNAPL.

Shin is also the author/editor of twenty-seven books and numerous articles. His books include The Four Talent Giants: National Strategies for Human Resource Development Across Japan, Australia, China, and India (2025); Korean Democracy in Crisis: The Threat of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization (2022); The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security (2021); Superficial Korea (2017); Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War (2016); Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (2015); Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014); New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories (2011); South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (2011); One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (2010); Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia (2007);  and Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy (2006). Due to the wide popularity of his publications, many have been translated and distributed to Korean audiences. His articles have appeared in academic and policy journals, including American Journal of Sociology, World Development, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Political Science Quarterly, Journal of Asian Studies, Comparative Education, International Sociology, Nations and Nationalism, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey, Journal of Democracy, and Foreign Affairs.

Shin is not only the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, but also continues to actively raise funds for Korean/Asian studies at Stanford. He gives frequent lectures and seminars on topics ranging from Korean nationalism and politics to Korea's foreign relations, historical reconciliation in Northeast Asia, and talent strategies. He serves on councils and advisory boards in the United States and South Korea and promotes policy dialogue between the two allies. He regularly writes op-eds and gives interviews to the media in both Korean and English.

Before joining Stanford in 2001, Shin taught at the University of Iowa (1991-94) and the University of California, Los Angeles (1994-2001). After receiving his BA from Yonsei University in Korea, he was awarded his MA and PhD from the University of Washington in 1991.

Director, Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC)
Director, Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab at APARC
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Gi-Wook Shin Speaker
Charles Burress interim bureau chief, East Bay bureau Commentator San Francisco Chronicle
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The Northeast Asian region has witnessed phenomenal economic growth and the spread of democratization in recent decades, yet wounds from past wrongs - committed in times of colonialism, war, and dictatorship - still remain. Of all the countries in the northeast region coping with historical injustice, the Republic of Korea has the rare distinction of confronting internal and external historical injustices simultaneously, both as a victim and as a perpetrator. Korea's experience highlights the major forces shaping the reckoning and reconciliation process, such as democratization, globalization, regional integration, and nationalism, in addition to providing valuable insight into the themes of historical injustice and reconciliation within the region.

Although there is no universal formula for reconciliation, the contributors examine the reaction of society from the perspective of citizens' groups, NGOs, and victim-activist groups toward such issues as enforced labor, ,comfort women, and internal injustices committed during the wars to foster a better understanding of the past and thus aid in future reconciliation between other Northeast Asian countries.

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Publication Type
Books
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Routledge
Authors
Gi-Wook Shin
Number
0-415-77093-9
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