Testimonials


Law Program Testimonials

One of the most valuable and unique aspects of this Fellowship is the expectation that we help to build the institutions in which we are placed. Most foreigners teaching law in China appear to have very light course loads and limited relationships with faculty. At [Sun Yat-sen] University, however, I was expected to help develop the clinical program and to engage outside of the classroom with faculty and students. These expectations fostered collaboration and bilateral exchanges crucial to my experience, the assistance I provided, and the relationships that I formed.


…by making students feel responsibility for helping people with problems and providing the students with skills training and supervision, clinical legal education cultivates crucially-needed professionalism in the Chinese legal system...perhaps most importantly, clinical legal education makes us feel and care, regardless of the culture or legal system. Many of the comparatively privileged students and teachers at Sun Yat-sen University Law School had previously had limited exposure to the struggles of poor, uneducated workers. In reflecting at the end of the semester, almost every member of the faculty team talked about the clinic as the most meaningful thing that they had done all year and about it awakening a sense of public service within them.


-Hari Osofsky, Law Fellow at Sun Yat-sen University, 2001-2002

Yale-China has made an unforgettable contribution to our law school by helping us create and run our clinical law program and by prompting us to work together with prestigious American universities and organizations.


-Cai Yanmin, professor, Sun Yat-sen University Law School

I think it is somewhat novel what we are doing here: training lawyers to be direct contributors to society and, through their interactions with the neediest and most disadvantaged in society, to think more deeply about the continuing relevance of existing laws and regulations impacting the society as a whole. It is an interesting shift in Chinese culture, given that until recently, lawyers were mere legal workers of the state….

Ultimately, I believe that how this system changes is a matter that is completely up to the Chinese to determine. However, I also believe that nations confront similar issues when evaluating the role that law, legal education and legal systems should play in the process of economic and political development. To the extent that we have confronted issues of an urban renewal and real estate market crash, for example, or sexism and sexual discrimination, earlier in our history than the Chinese may have, I think the greatest and best role that we can play while here is merely sharing our own experiences and exposing the Chinese to how we chose to resolve these issues.


-Pamela Phan, Law Fellow at Wuhan University and South-Central University of Law and Politics, 2004-2005

There is a lot of funding and many short-term projects that seem to be available to Chinese institutions; however, the occasional training session or face-to-face dialogue with Chinese scholars and administrators may not have the most lasting effect or be the best use of funds. What is unique about the Yale-China Fellowship is that it plants a long-term seed and allows it to grow—with the institution. The Fellow becomes a part of the host institution and is thus intimately involved in the day-to-day advances and struggles made by that host institution. This role is significant not only to the growth of the individual Fellow, as a scholar of law, but also to the institution at which that Fellow is housed.

I continue to maintain that this fellowship provided me with a crucial opportunity to see law in action in China, while simultaneously providing my students and colleagues with the chance to see how I—as an American—understand and practice law.


-John Smagula, Law Fellow at Tsinghua University School of Law, 2001-2002