This talk will focus on the impact of the decision in 2003 to revive mediation as a key method of labor dispute resolution. In the context of changing economic and social conditions, including tighter labor markets, the Chinese state has pushed for more protection labor legislation, which has increased the number and severity of disputes. At the same time, the state has deemphasized legal channels for resolution, encouraging workers and employers to bypass adversarial litigation, reviving mediation as the preferred method of settlement. This case demonstrates the uses and limitations of “rule of law” under authoritarian rule and the contradiction of stronger laws with a resolution method that tends to deemphasize law and legal rights in favor of harmony and conciliation will be explored.

Emeritus History professor Barton J. Bernstein will present a lecture on the U.S. decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan in August 1945. The hour-long lecture will be followed by a Q&A session. 

Professor Bernstein's lecture is planned as a response-- partly in agreement and partly in disagreement-- to the noted filmmaker Oliver Stone's documentary, "The Bomb."

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it." – Yogi Berra

Ambassador Bosworth will discuss some of the possible options for dealing with North Korea. This is a keynote speech open to the public during the Fifth Annual Koret Conference on "North Korea Policy."

Ambassador Bosworth is the Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. A former career diplomat, he served as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, and Tunisia. Most recently, he served as U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy for the Obama administration. 

This event is made possible by the generous support of the Koret Foundation.

North Korea has smuggled monarchy through the front door of its communist system. Korea's millennia-long history of kings and queens means that the people of the DPRK have only known monarchy or dictatorship (Japanese, 1910-45; the Kim family's, 1945--present); ordinary people frequently refer to their leader as "wang," or king. Unlike with Kim Jong Il (who resembled his mother, not his father), the regime has gone out of its way to identify Kim Jong Un with his grandfather--and the grandson, in turn, has adopted the characteristic public style of Kim Il Sung. Many American commentators mistakenly assume that when the leader dies, North Korea will be like the Soviet Union after Stalin, or China after Mao. In fact it has gone through two stable leadership transitions, in 1994 and 2011, and given Kim Jong Un's youth, there may not be another one for many years.

This event is co-sponsored by Center for East Asian Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Department of History and Korean Studies Program

Please register at http://ceas.stanford.edu/events/event_detail.php?id=3147.

For questions and details, please contact Ms. Marna Romanoff at romanoff@stanford.edu

Richard Steinberg is Professor of Law at UCLA and the Director of the Sanela Diana Jenkins Human Rights Project. In addition to his UCLA appointment, Professor Steinberg is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Department of Political Science.

Professor Steinberg has written over forty articles on international law.  His most recent books are Assessing the Legacy of the ICTY (forthcoming 2010, Martinus Nijhoff), International Institutions (co-edited, 2009, SAGE), International Law and International Relations (co-edited, 2007, Cambridge University Press), and The Evolution of the Trade Regime: Economics, Law, and Politics of the GATT/WTO (co-authored, 2006, Princeton University Press).

Helen Stacy is Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and Director of the Program on Human Rights at CDDRL

As a scholar of international and comparative law, legal philosophy, and human rights, Helen Stacy has produced works analyzing the efficacy of regional courts in promoting human rights, differences in the legal systems of neighboring countries, and the impact of postmodernism on legal thinking. Her recent scholarship has focused on how international and regional human rights courts can improve human rights standards while also honoring social, cultural, and religious values.

Ms. Shamila Batohi is Senior Legal Advisor to the Prosecutor at the ICC, and former Director of Public Prosecutions in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. In 1995, Ms. Batohi was part of a multi-disciplinary team mandated by President Mandela to investigate hit squad activities in the police during the apartheid years. As head of the Directorate of Special Operations, the unit that is better known as the ‘Scorpions’, Batohi was tasked with investigating serious organized crime. Famously, in 2000, Batohi was appointed to lead evidence in the King Commission hearings to investigate cricket match-fixing allegations involving Hansie Cronje.