January 4, 2007
Law school receives $1.3 million to improve access to justice in rural China
The Asian Law Center at the UW School of Law was awarded a $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of State for a three-year project to help promote and improve access to justice in rural China.
The project, titled “Empowering Rural Communities: Legal Aid and the Rule of Law in Rural China,” will promote immediate access to law for citizens in three of China’s poorest provinces, as well as evaluate the country’s current legal aid services. As part of the project, up to 100 Chinese county legal aid lawyers and law student interns will receive training.
UW Professor of Law Veronica Taylor, also the Director of the Asian Law Center, and UW Political Science Professor Susan Whiting are the lead faculty, and UW Assistant Professor of Law Dongsheng Zang will serve as the country expert for the project, which begins this month.
The on-site partners will be the national law schools in Hunan, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Yunnan, provinces with some of the fewest resources in China, and the National Legal Aid Center, Justice Ministry in Beijing.
The Asian Law Center also manages the Afghan Legal Educators Project, funded by a $2 million grant in 2004 from the State Department to provide post-graduate legal training to Afghan faculty and curriculum development to train the Afghan legal community.
