With the American government shut down over congressional budget battles, it seems like a particularly opportune time for scholars to talk about the challenges of governance and the rule of law.

But the political scientists and legal experts who gathered this week for a rule of law workshop organized by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Law School probably didn’t see this crisis coming.

Photo Credit: Rod Searcey

“When we first began talking, Gerhard said the rule of law and governance are not peculiar only to developing counties,” Paul Brest, a professor and former dean of the law school, said as he recalled discussing such a workshop with Gerhard Casper, a constitutional law expert and FSI senior fellow. “I don’t think he predicted where the United States would be today.”

The half-day workshop brought together 20 scholars associated with FSI and the law school who discussed their individual research and explored possibilities for collaboration.

Their wide-ranging discussions covered the definitions and measurement of rule of law, governance in developed and developing countries, political participation, partisanship, and policy implementation.

“How do you implement what sounds like a thoughtful, abstract idea?” asked Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, FSI’s director and law school professor, in discussing the complexity of the concept of rule of law. “There is something about the rule of law that has to go beyond whether a statute is complied with. A society also has to think smartly about how to manage discretion.”

But bending the rules without breaking the rule of law “is a difficult matter," said law school Professor Jenny Martinez – and one worthy of academic attention.

“Most well-functioning legal systems … involve a certain amount of discretion,” she said. “But that’s something we can explore.”

Discussion sessions were led by Martinez and Cuéllar, as well as Erik Jensen and Bernadette Meyler; Bruce Cain, Larry Diamond and Nathaniel Persily; Francis Fukuyama and Avner Greif.

“There’s a lot of work going on across campus focusing on governance and the rule of law,” Brest said. “Getting together to begin discussing that could create some sort of networks and a whole that is greater than the individual parts.”

As the new academic year gets underway, the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center’s Corporate Affiliates Program is excited to welcome its new class of fellows to Stanford University:

• Huihong Cai, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
• Il Rae Cho, Samsung Life Insurance
• Tetsuo Ishiai, Mitsubishi Electric
• Kensuke Itoh, Sumitomo Corporation
• Yong Je Kim, Samsung Electronics
• Katsunori Komeda, Sumitomo Corporation
• Chunquan Liu, Beiijng Petrochemical Engineering Co., Ltd.
• Guangmu Liu, PetroChina
• Tejas Mehta, Reliance Life Sciences
• Satoshi Ogawa, Japan Patent Office
• Toshihiko Takeda, Shizuoka Prefectural Government
• Keiichi Uruga, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan
• Tun Wang, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
• Wei Wang, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
• Kenji Yanada, Ministry of Finance, Japan
• Xiaoyu Zhang, PetroChina

During their stay at Stanford University, the fellows will audit classes, work on English skills, and conduct individual research projects; at the end of the year they will make a formal presentation on the findings from their research. During their stay at the center, they will have the opportunity to consult with Shorenstein APARC's scholars and attend events featuring visiting experts from around the world. The fellows will also participate in special events and site visits to gain a firsthand understanding of business, society, and culture in the United States.

Academics from American, European and Asian universities came together September 19th and 20th to present their research on the large-scale movements of people, and engage in a multidisciplinary exchange of ideas and perspectives.  This installment of the Europe Center - University of Vienna bi-annual series of conferences and workshops was held on the Stanford campus and co-sponsored by The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

For the agenda, please visit the event website Migration and Integration: Global and Local Dimensions.

David Lobell, an associate professor of environmental Earth system science and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, has been named a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and one of Foreign Policy Magazine's 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2013.

MacArthur "Genius Grant"

Lobell, who is also the associate director of FSI’s Center on Food Security and the Environment, was cited "for unearthing richly informative, but often underutilized sources of data to investigate the impact of climate change on crop production and global food security." He received his doctorate degree from Stanford in 2005 and was appointed to the faculty in 2009.

A pioneer of the emerging field of crop informatics, Lobell is revolutionizing the understanding of the environmental factors controlling crop yields, with a particular emphasis on adaptation to climate change.

His work provides decision makers, for the first time, with critical information about how to adapt agricultural development to climate change.

"I was completely surprised by this recognition, but am really excited by the opportunity it presents," said Lobell, who is also a senior fellow at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. "To have the MacArthur Foundation recognize the value of taking new approaches and the importance of the topics of hunger and food production is deeply gratifying."

Lobell's research focuses on identifying opportunities to increase yields of crops including wheat and corn in major agricultural regions, with projects currently underway in Africa, South Asia, Mexico and the United States. 

"I'm interested in how to feed the world and protect the environment at the same time," he said. "While there are many theories about how to do that, my work tries to test these theories, often using data that were collected for completely different reasons."

The citation emphasized Lobell's work on understanding the risks of climate change, and options for adaptation. "Climate change is one of the reasons for concern about feeding people in the future, but it's not insurmountable if good decisions are made," he said. 

When asked how he would use the funding, Lobell said he would not rush the decision. He said that some of the award would likely relieve him of writing grant proposals. In addition, he said he would consider using some toward more travel.

"A lot of my better ideas in the past have started with travel and interactions with international collaborations," he said.  "And there's always a tradeoff between my work travel and family.  I now might take my wife and young sons with me on some extended trips."

Foreign Policy's Leading Global Thinkers

In December, Foreign Policy named Lobell one of the 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2013. The recognition comes for his work "helping farmers feed the world" in a changing climate. Lobell is joined on the magazine's list by fellow researchers working on climate issues, along with prominent public figures like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and Pope Francis.

Widely sought throughout the world to provide expert advice, Lobell is a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report chapter on food security, to be published in 2014. The IPCC, which won the Nobel Prize in 2007, also made Foreign Policy's 2013 Leading Global Thinkers list alongside Lobell, "for showing that humanity is on the brink of catastrophe" if climate change is not addressed quickly and aggressively.

Lobell studied applied mathematics at Brown University, and before receiving his bachelor's degree in 2000, he spent the summer of 1999 as a research intern at Stanford, developing remote sensing algorithms. He then pursued graduate studies at Stanford, receiving his doctorate in geological and environmental sciences in 2005.

He was a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 2005-2007, and returned to Stanford as a senior research scholar in the Program on Food Security and the Environment in 2008-2009.  He accepted an appointment as assistant professor in the Stanford School of Earth Sciences in 2009. 

In addition to his research, Lobell teaches several courses open to both undergraduates and graduate students, including "Feeding Nine Billion," "Climate and Agriculture," and "Global Land Use to 2050," as well as modeling and statistical methods classes.

Lobell received a NASA New Investigator Program Award for 2008-2011. He received the James B. Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union in 2010, awarded for significant contributions to the geophysical sciences by an outstanding scientist under the age of 36.

Nancy Peterson is the chief communications officer for Stanford's School of Earth Sciences. Laura Seaman, communications manager for the Center on Food Security and the Environment, contributed to this article.