People

Leadership | Staff | Affiliates
Visiting Scholars | Former Visiting Scholars

Leadership

JOSÉ E. ALVAREZ
Faculty Director (on sabbatical during 2023-2024)

José E. Alvarez is the Herbert and Rose Rubin Professor of International Law at New York University School of Law and the faculty director of USALI. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Institut de Droit International, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a former president of the American Society of International Law and previous co-editor-in-chief of the American Journal of International Law. He teaches courses on international law, foreign investment, and international organizations. His more than 140 articles and book chapters and six books have made substantial scholarly contributions to a wide range of subjects within international law, including the law-generating rules of international organizations, the challenges facing international criminal tribunals, the boundaries between “public” and private,” and the legitimacy issues surrounding the international investment regime. His most recent books include The Impact of International Organizations on International Law (2017) (originating from his General Course offered at the Xiamen Academy of International Law), International Investment Law (2017), and The Boundaries of Investment Arbitration (2018). Email Professor Alvarez.

KATHERINE WILHELM
Executive Director

Katherine Wilhelm is executive director of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute, an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law, and editor of the institute’s online essay series, USALI Perspectives. She is an expert on China’s legal system, public interest law organizations, and civil society. She joined USALI in August 2019 after returning from nearly three decades of residence in Asia, where she split her career between law and journalism. Most recently she was the legal program officer at the Ford Foundation’s China office, where she supported Chinese legal advocacy NGOs and university-based legal research and education programs. Before that, she directed the Beijing office of Yale Law School’s China Law Center, which implements law reform projects in partnership with government, academia and civil society. Professor Wilhelm also practiced corporate law in the Beijing office of a leading US law firm. Before beginning her career in law, she was a journalist. She reported for The Associated Press from Beijing, Hong Kong, and Hanoi, and for the Far Eastern Economic Review from Hong Kong and Shanghai. Her work has been published in leading newspapers around the world. She was a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University in 1996-97. She holds a J.D. from Columbia Law School, a master’s degree in East Asian studies from Harvard University, a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s degree in history from Niagara University. Email Katherine Wilhelm.

BRUCE ARONSON
Senior Advisor, Japan Center

Bruce Aronson is senior advisor at the Japan Center of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute and an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law. He has been a tenured professor of law at universities in the United States (Creighton University) and Japan (Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo). Before beginning his academic career, he was a corporate partner at the law firm of Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP in New York. He also served as an independent director at Eisai Co., Ltd., a listed Japanese pharmaceutical company. Professor Aronson twice received Fulbright grants to be a senior research scholar at the University of Tokyo and at Waseda University, and was a visiting scholar at the Bank of Japan. His main area of research is comparative corporate governance with a focus on Japan and Asia. Publications include a textbook, Corporate Governance in Asia: A Comparative Approach (with J. Kim, Cambridge University Press, 2019). Email Bruce Aronson.

IRA BELKIN
Executive Director Emeritus

Ira Belkin served as USALI’s first executive director from 2012 to 2019 and then supported USALI as a senior research scholar and adjunct faculty for several years. Before joining USALI, Professor Belkin was the law and rights program officer at the Ford Foundation’s Beijing office. Before that, he combined a career as an American lawyer and federal prosecutor with a deep interest in China. He served two tours at the US Embassy in Beijing and a year as a fellow at the Yale Law School China Law Center. Professor Belkin spent 16 years as a federal prosecutor in Providence, RI, where he was chief of the criminal division, and in Brooklyn, NY, where he was deputy chief of the general crimes unit. Prior to studying law, Professor Belkin taught Chinese language at Middlebury College. In addition to his J.D. from New York University School of Law, Belkin has a master’s degree in Chinese studies from Seton Hall University and a bachelor’s degree from SUNY Albany. Email Ira Belkin.

JEROME A. COHEN
Faculty Director Emeritus

Jerome A. Cohen, a professor at NYU School of Law from 1990-2020 and founding director emeritus of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute, is a leading American expert on Chinese law and government. A pioneer in the field, Professor Cohen began studying and teaching about China’s legal system in the early 1960s and from 1964 to 1979 introduced the teaching of Asian law into the curriculum of Harvard Law School, where he served as Jeremiah Smith Professor, Associate Dean and Director of East Asian Legal Studies. Professor Cohen served for several years as C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director of Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he currently is an Adjunct Senior Fellow.  He has published hundreds of scholarly articles on various topics; a book, China Today, co-authored with his wife, Joan Lebold Cohen; and frequent journalistic opinion pieces for various newspapers. Professor Cohen continues his research and writing on Asian law, specifically focusing on legal institutions, criminal justice reform, dispute resolution, human rights, and the role of international law relating to China and Taiwan. View his complete bibliography here. Email Professor Cohen.

RODERICK HILLS
Faculty Advisor

Roderick Hills is the William T. Comfort, III Professor of Law and a faculty advisor to NYU’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute. He teaches and writes in public law areas with a focus on the law governing division of powers between central and subcentral governments. These areas include constitutional law, local government law, land use regulation, jurisdiction, and education law. His publications have appeared, among other places, in the Harvard Law Review, Pennsylvania Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, and the Supreme Court Law Review. Hills holds bachelor’s and law degrees from Yale University. Email Professor Hills.

REN ITO
Senior Advisor, Program on International Law and International Relations in Asia

Ren Ito is a diplomat, scholar, and social entrepreneur. He joined the Japanese Foreign Service in 2001 and held key positions in Tokyo and Washington D.C. for 15 years. Mr. Ren’s current research focuses on the strategic implications of the maritime disputes in the South China Sea and the East China Sea, and how Japan, the US, and China view sovereignty and international law of the sea.  He received his LL.M. from NYU School of Law, and his LL.B. from the University of Tokyo.  Mr. Ren also holds an M.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University.

FRANK UPHAM
Faculty Advisor

Frank Upham is the Wilf Family Professor of Property Law emeritus and teaches courses on property, law and development, and comparative law and society with an emphasis on East Asia and the developing world. His scholarship focuses on Japan and China, and his book Law and Social Change in Postwar Japan received the Thomas J. Wilson Prize from Harvard University Press in 1987. Recent scholarship includes Who Will Find the Defendant If He Stays with His Sheep? Justice in Rural China, From Demsetz to Deng: Speculations on the Implications of Chinese Growth for Law and Development Theory, and Resistible Force Meets Malleable Object: The Story of the ‘Introduction’ of Norms of Gender Equality into Japanese Employment Practice. In 2018 he published The Great Property Fallacy: Theory, Reality, and Growth in Developing Countries, which was translated into Japanese in 2023 as Zaisanken no Oukiinaru no Gokai. His current research is in gender discrimination in four affluent democracies: France, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States. Prior to moving to NYU School of Law, Professor Upham taught at Ohio State, Harvard, and Boston College law schools. He served as co-director of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute until 2016. Email Professor Upham.

Staff

YUAN (AMY) GAO
Research Scholar

Amy Gao has been a research scholar at USALI since 2015 and was a visiting scholar during the 2012-2013 academic year. She holds a Ph.D and LL.B in law from Peking University Law School and an LL.M from Columbia Law School. At USALI she conducts legal research and helps implement the institute’s cooperative projects and guest speaker program. Her research interests include criminal law, criminal justice, evidence, constitutional protection of procedural rights, and the development and implementation of law. Email Amy Gao.

MYUNG-SOO LEE
Senior Fellow

Myung-Soo Lee was born in Seoul, Korea, and holds an LL.M and SJD from Harvard Law School in public international law and conflict resolution. Her current research interests include legal issues related to North Korea’s economic development and engagement with the international community, public international law issues related to the establishment of rule of law and the advancement of human rights, and comparative legal analysis involving East Asian countries. Ms. Lee was a McArthur Scholar and Research Fellow at the Program on Non-Violent Sanctions at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University and collaborated with the Harvard Negotiation Project/Conflict Management Group. Ms. Lee received an LL.B and LL.M in international law from Korea University. At USALI, Ms. Lee fosters connection and collaboration through human rights research and Korean research. Email Myung-Soo.

CHI YIN
Research Scholar and Operations Manager

Chi Yin is a research scholar and operations manager at USALI. She previously served as a judge in the Intermediate Court of the greater Chengdu Municipality in China, where the cases she heard included appellate and first-instance criminal trials of white-collar, drug trafficking, and violent crimes. Other work in the court included managing projects related to internal court reform and editing an internal law review. She left the court in 2008 and moved to the US, where she pursued public interest law, including volunteer work with Colorado Legal Services. She writes on a variety of subjects related to Chinese law and society, including anti-corruption, criminal procedure, mental health law and digital data security. She received an LL.M from NYU in 2013, and holds an LL.B and LL.M from Sichuan University. She is a member of the New York and Washington state bars. She has been a member of the Chinese bar since 2004. Email Chi Yin.

Affiliated Scholars

YU-JIE CHEN
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Yu-Jie Chen is an assistant research professor at the Law Institute of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica. Her research focuses on human rights and international law and relations, particularly in the context of China, Taiwan, and China-Taiwan relations. Professor Chen received J.S.D. and LL.M. degrees from NYU School of Law and LL.M. and LL.B. degrees from National Chengchi University in Taiwan. She was an inaugural global academic fellow at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law (2019-2020). Before that, she was a staff research scholar at USALI and a researcher at the non-governmental organization Human Rights in China in New York. She previously practiced in the Taipei-based international law firm Lee and Li. Contact her here.

MICHAEL C. DAVIS
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Michael C. Davis is an international human rights scholar. He is a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC., professor of law and international affairs at India's O.P. Jindal Global University, and an affiliate research scholar at the Weatherhead East Asia Institute at Columbia University. He was a professor in the Law Faculty at the University of Hong Kong until late 2016. His books include Freedom Undone: The Assault on Liberal Values and Institutions in Hong Kong (2024), Making Hong Kong China: The Rollback of Human Rights and the Rule of Law (2020), International Intervention in the Post-Cold War World (2004), Human Rights and Chinese Values (1995), and Constitutional Confrontation in Hong Kong (1990). Davis has advocated for political reform and universal suffrage in Hong Kong and around Asia for more than two decades. His writings address related issues across the region, with special attention to Hong Kong and Tibet. He frequently publishes commentaries in newspapers and public affairs journals as well as academic journals. Amnesty International, the Hong Kong Journalists Association and the Hong Kong FCC awarded him a 2014 Human Rights Press Award for his commentaries on the 2014 Hong Kong “umbrella movement” published in the South China Morning Post.

ALLEN CLAYTON-GREENE
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Allen Clayton-Greene has more than a decade of experience as a researcher, program officer, and lawyer in Australia, China, and the US.  He is admitted to practice as an attorney in both New York, USA and Victoria, Australia.  After graduation from the University of Melbourne in 2007, Allen worked as a litigation lawyer with the Australian law firm, Allens Arthur Robinson.  In 2012, Allen was awarded an Australian Government Endeavour Executive Award fellowship, through which he undertook fieldwork in China investigating supply chain issues, and carried out research with the Beijing-based consulting firm China Policy focusing on CCP influence and policy.  He has worked as a China law officer at Human Rights in China and worked with USALI during 2013-2020 as an intern, visiting scholar, and staff research scholar. He received his LL.M degree from New York University School of Law in 2014.  Allen speaks Mandarin Chinese. His research interests include Chinese criminal law and procedure, digital and cyber-security, constitutional law, and international human rights law. He has been an associate of the Asian Law Centre at The University of Melbourne. Email Allen.

PETER DUTTON
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Peter Dutton is a senior research scholar in law and senior fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School. Before that, he was a professor of international law in the Stockton Center for International Law at the U.S. Naval War College and concurrently an adjunct professor at NYU Law School. In that capacity, he was an adjunct faculty advisor at USALI. At the U.S. Naval War College, his academic home for many years, Professor Dutton’s positions included interim dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies and director of the China Maritime Studies Institute. His research combines international law, China studies, and international politics, including geostrategic theory. His writings focus on international law of the sea and air, with an emphasis on the East and South China Seas, Chinese views of sovereignty and international law, the strategic implications of China’s maritime expansion, and Taiwan in international law. He is a non-resident affiliate in research at Harvard University Fairbank Center for China Studies. Professor Dutton is a retired navy judge advocate and former naval flight officer. He holds a Ph.D. from King’s College London, a J.D. from the College of William & Mary, an M.A. from the U.S. Naval War College, and a B.S. from Boston University.

ANDY GRIFFITHS
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Dr. Andy Griffiths is an internationally recognized expert on the subject of investigative interviewing and interrogation, drawing on a combination of real-life experience, academic publications, and international consultation work. He was also influential in the development of investigative interviewing training for police officers across the country, after the implementation of the PEACE model. His Ph.D. research evaluated the value of specialist interview training in real-life major crime cases. He has lectured and trained in numerous countries on topics related to miscarriages of justice and criminal justice development, and served as consultant to law enforcement agencies.

DAN GUTTMAN
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Dan Guttman is a teacher, lawyer, and former public servant.  He was executive director of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Human Radiation Experiments, Commissioner of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, special counsel to Senate investigations of government management, and UNDP China and EU China foreign expert on environmental law. He has represented cities, states, citizens, and workers in energy, environment, civil rights, antitrust, and whistle-blower litigation, and is of counsel to Guttman, Buschner, and Brooks.
Recent publications include: The global vernacular of governance and instruments: translating between the operating systems of China and the United States in the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration; Environmental governance in China: Interactions between the state and “nonstate actors”; and China’s campaign-style Internet finance governance: Causes, effects, and lessons learned for new information-based approaches to governance.

AARON HALEGUA
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Aaron Halegua is a practicing lawyer and consultant. He is also a research fellow at NYU Law School’s Center for Labor and Employment Law. His interests include labor and employment law, dispute resolution, legal aid and access to justice, labor trafficking, labor issues involving China’s “One Belt, One Road” investments, and corporate social responsibility and supply chains in the United States, China, and internationally. In 2021, the Human Trafficking Legal Center named him the “On My Side 2021 Litigator of the Year” for his civil litigation on behalf of Chinese construction workers trafficked to Saipan to build casinos. His published reports include Workplace Gender-Based Harassment and Violence in China (2021) and Who Will Represent China's Workers? Lawyers, Legal Aid, and the Enforcement of Labor Rights (2016). Aaron has consulted on labor issues in China, Myanmar, Malaysia, and elsewhere for Apple, the Ford Foundation, International Labor Organization, International Labor Rights Forum, Asia Foundation, and American Bar Association. He has been quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Economist and given talks in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Aaron holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and an A.B. in international relations from Brown University. 

MARGARET LEWIS
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Margaret Lewis is a professor of law at Seton Hall University and associate dean for faculty development and institutional operations. Her research focuses on law in mainland China and Taiwan with an emphasis on criminal justice. Professor Lewis has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar at National Taiwan University, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Public Intellectuals Program fellow with the National Committee on United States-China Relations, and a delegate to the US-Japan Foundation's US-Japan Leadership Program.

CHAO LIU
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Chao Liu received her LL.M. from NYU School of Law in 2010 and was a research scholar at USALI from 2011 to 2020. Prior to that, she worked for one year as a legal intern in the Enforcement Division of the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, DC, where she assisted investigations involving mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations, and accounting fraud. Ms. Liu has four years of working experience in China. She worked for two years as a legal assistant in a prominent Shanghai law firm specializing in cross-border mergers and acquisitions. Prior to joining the law firm, she was a business consultant at the Council of Great Lakes Governor’s Office in Shanghai. Ms. Liu received her LL.B. from Shanghai University School of Law, graduating in the top 1% of her class.

SIDA LIU
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Sida Liu is professor of law and sociology and associate dean of taught postgraduate programmes development in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. He is also professor of sociology, law, and global affairs at the University of Toronto (on leave). Before joining the University of Hong Kong faculty in 2022 and the University of Toronto faculty in 2016, Professor Liu taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009-2016 and directed its East Asian Legal Studies Center. Professor Liu received his LL.B. from Peking University Law School and his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. Professor Liu is the author of four books in Chinese and English, including The Lost Polis: Transformation of the Legal Profession in Contemporary China (Peking University Press, 2008), The Logic of Fragmentation: An Ecological Analysis of the Chinese Legal Services Market (Shanghai Joint Publishing Co., 2011), Criminal Defense in China: The Politics of Lawyers at Work (with Terence C. Halliday, Cambridge University Press, 2016), and The Asian Law and Society Reader (with Lynette J. Chua and David M. Engel, Cambridge University Press, 2023).

XIAONAN LIU
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Xiaonan Liu is a professor of law and director of the Constitutionalism Research Institute at the China University of Political Science and Law. Through this position, Professor Liu has coordinated and conducted research on comparative projects of equality and nondiscrimination with the International Labor Organization, the Ford Foundation, Yale Law School’s China Law Center, and other foreign universities. She has lead a number of team research projects focused on gender equality and the condition of legal education in China. Professor Liu teaches anti-discrimination law, gender and law, and jurisprudence. She earned an LL.M. from Yale Law School, as well as an LL.B., LL.M., and Ph.D. from Jilin University School of Law.

TAKASHI MARUTA
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Takashi Maruta, professor emeritus at Kwansei Gakuin University Law School, obtained his LL.M. from the University of Michigan Law School with a Fulbright graduate student grant and his Ph.D. from Kwansei Gakuin University. He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School and Columbia Law School, and has taught Japanese law at Michigan Law School, the University of Hawaii School of Law, and Sussex University Law Centre of Sussex, England.  He is known as a leading scholar of the jury systems and an advocate and pathfinder in institutionalizing public participation in Japanese criminal procedure (known as Saiban-in Seido). He is also a bengoshi (attorney) with both a criminal and civil practice in Kobe, Japan.  His research interests include the comparative legal system, civil and criminal jury system, and legal theory. He has struggled to discover what legal system can promote and realize a fair and democratic society and achieve fundamental human rights. He has published several books on the jury system and numerous amount of articles in Japanese. His most recent English book is: Japan and Civil Jury Trials: The Convergence of Forces (with Matthew Wilson and Hiroshi Fukurai; Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015).

CARL MINZNER
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Carl Minzner is a professor of law at Fordham Law School and senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relation. His research focuses on Chinese law and governance, particularly judicial reform, social unrest, and state-society relations. He is the author of  End of an Era: How China's Authoritarian Revival is Undermining its Rise (Oxford University Press, 2018). He previously was an associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and senior counsel for the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. 

EVA PILS
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Eva Pils is Humboldt Professor of Human Rights Law at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg. Before that she was professor of law at King's College London. She studied law, philosophy, and Sinology in Heidelberg, London, and Beijing and holds a PhD in law from University College London. Her research addresses autocratic conceptions and practices of governance, legal and political resistance, and forms of complicity with autocratic wrongs. Her most recent book, Human Rights in China: A Social Practice in the Shadows of Authoritarianism, was published in 2018. Professor Pils has been an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law and has held visiting positions at NYU Law School, Cornell Law School, the London School of Economics Law Department, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), and Columbia University (New York). She is a member of the Academic Freedom and Internationalisation Working Group and a legal action committee member of the Global Legal Action Network.

MARK SIDEL
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Mark Sidel is Doyle-Bascom Professor of Law and Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and consultant for Asia at the Washington-based International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), focusing on China, India, and Vietnam. He has served as visiting professor at multiple institutions in the US and abroad. He also has been president of the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR), the international academic association for research on civil society, philanthropy, and the nonprofit sector. He has served as a consultant to a wide range of foundations, international NGOs, governments and other institutions. Professor Sidel’s research and writing focus on the nonprofit sector and philanthropy with a focus on Asia and the United States, modern secessionary movements, law and development, and comparative law. He is currently working on a book for Brookings Press on China and the international nonprofit community.

TRANG (MAE) NGUYEN
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Trang (Mae) Nguyen is an assistant professor of law at Temple University Beasley School of Law. Before that, she was the John N. Hazard Fellow at the U.S.-Asia Law Institute, New York University School of Law, and a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Law and Society. Professor Nguyen’s research uses mixed empirical methods to study transnational business governance, global supply chains, and authoritarian legality, with a focus on Asia. Her work has appeared in the Stanford Law and Policy Review, Harvard Human Rights Journal, American Journal of International Law Unbound, and New York University Law Review, among others. Professor Nguyen earned a J.D. degree from NYU School of Law, where she was a Law and Business Scholar and an executive editor of the NYU Law Review.

DAN ZHOU

Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Dan Zhou belongs to China’s first generation of public interest lawyers, and is the first Chinese lawyer to reveal his sexual orientation to the media. He has worked for two decades on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues as well as the rights of people with HIV/AIDS in China, by engaging in social activism, legal advocacy, and research. He is the editor of Homosexuality and Law: Essays and Materials of the International Conference on Sexuality, Policy, and Law, the proceedings of the first ever symposium in China on legal topics related to sexual orientation, which he co-organized with the China Law Center of Yale Law School in 2006. In 2009 Mr. Zhou published Pleasure and Discipline: Jurisprudential Imagination of Same-Sex Desire in the Chinese Modernity, one of the first Chinese-language monographs on legal treatment of same-sex intimacy in modern China. Mr. Zhou holds LL.Ms from Renmin University of China and Harvard Law School, and is a JSD candidate at Harvard Law School. He has been a visiting scholar at USALI and at the Paul Tsai China Center of Yale Law School.

YUE (ANGELA) ZHUO
Non-Resident Affiliated Scholar

Yue (Angela) Zhuo is an associate professor of criminology and sociology at St. John’s University.  She received her LL.B. and a B.A. in English from Tianjin University, an M.A. in economics from Nankai University, and her Ph.D. in sociology (with concentrations in criminology and demography) from SUNY-Albany.  Professor Zhuo’s scholarship focuses on crime and law, substance abuse and mental health, and intergenerational family dynamics in both Chinese and American societies.  She has published extensively in prestigious journals such as the British Journal of Criminology, American Journal of Community Psychology, Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, Crime, Law & Social Change, Asian Journal of Criminology, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Research on Aging, and others.  Professor Zhuo is an elected board member of the Association of Chinese Criminology and Criminal Justice.