Forum addresses law-culture relationships in Asian countries

CLAIRE ZUGMEYER Professor J. Mark Ramseyer of
Harvard Law School speaks during a conference about modern legal
systems in Asia.

By Lily Jamali
Daily Bruin Contributor

Academics from UCLA and across the country gathered Friday and
Saturday to discuss the sometimes conflicting relationship between
traditional and legal values in Asia.

“The conference addresses the path that economic and
social development is taking in Asia,” said Law Professor
Arthur Rosset, a conference organizer. “It deals with the
extent to which it is building itself on legal models compared to
the extent to which it is building itself on traditional
models.”

The conference, titled “Rule of Law and Group Identities
Embedded in Asian Traditions and Cultures,” gave researchers
an opportunity to exchange ideas on the interaction between law and
culture in China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

“Those issues are happening in China right now where there
have been impositions of rule of law regimes and that is primarily
what the conference tries to analyze from different
perspectives,” said Professor Margaret Woo of the
Northeastern University School of Law.

The symposium, held at the Faculty Center, discussed
globalization, immigration and migrant workers, and the role of
lawyers in the economics and politics of Asian nations.

According to UCLA Sociology Professor Lucie Cheng, participating
members of academia hope to eventually bring out a volume on themes
related to law and culture in Asian society.

“The conference is a work group for people who are
concerned with the same themes,” Cheng said. “We come
together and discuss everyone’s papers.”

Although professors and legal practitioners composed the
majority of participants in the conference, a handful of the
roughly 25 people in attendance showed up out of personal
interest.

“I came because I’m always interested in things
happening in my home country of Taiwan,” said Chungmin Chu, a
financial manager at the Port of Los Angeles. “I have enjoyed
listening to all of these points of view because it has updated my
knowledge in this area.”

The School of Law, UCLA Asia-Pacific Institute, and the Hiroshi
Wagatsuma Memorial Fund co-sponsored the conference, which
commemorated the 75th anniversary of the birth of late UCLA
professor Hiroshi Wagatsuma. From 1974 to 1983, Wagatsuma served as
a professor in the Anthropology Department before returning to his
home in Japan.

“He was a wonderful man,” said Rosset, who worked
with Professor Wagatsuma while they were both at UCLA.

The topic of the conference dealt with issues Wagatsuma focused
on during his lifetime.

“Professor Wagatsuma was interested in the question of
culture and law,” said Cheng, who also organized the
conference. “He was most concerned with the legal system of
outcasts in society ““ he was looking out for the weak and how
they were treated legally.”

Although the two-day conference is the first symposium to be
sponsored by the fund, it has provided students and faculty with
research opportunities since its inception 15 years ago.

“It has supported a lot of graduate students who went to
Japan to study law and culture and it continues to do that,”
Cheng said.