Professors Thomas D. Barton and James Cooper Join U.S. Government Delegation and Address World Intellectual Property Organization’s Advisory Committee on Enforcement
On March 3, 2014, Professors Thomas D. Barton and James Cooper joined the U.S. Government Delegation to the World Intellectual Property Organizations’ (WIPO) Biannual Advisory Committee on Enforcement in Geneva, Switzerland. Professor Cooper said, “It was a great honor to work with Professor Barton and members of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to help educate fellow WIPO delegations on the broad panoply of mechanisms to settle IP disputes."
The presentation, Resolving Intellectual Property Problem Through Alternative Dispute Resolution (WIPO/ACE/9/9)) was lauded by the German Government Delegation. WIPO's Deputy Director General Johannes Christian Wichard said, “[the] substantial paper and excellent presentation [were] well received by the participants and contributed to the success of the session of the Committee.”
Professor James Cooper Lectures on Intellectual Property Piracy at the University of Geneva and University of Hong Kong
In early March 2014, Professor James M. Cooper traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, where he met with colleagues Professors Jacques de Werra and Pierre Heuze from the Law School of the University of Geneva. On March 5, 2014, Professor Cooper started a lecture series about Intellectual Property Piracy. The first lecture took place at the Law School of the University of Geneva.
The lecture series continued in April 2014 when Professor Cooper traveled to lecture in Asia. On April 24 and 25, 2014, Professor Cooper lectured in Hong Kong at the Law and Technology Centre of the University of Hong Kong. The lecture took place at Cheng Yu Tung Tower at the Centennial Campus on HKU.
Professor James Cooper Awarded Chilean Ministry of Justice Medal
On May 24, 2013, Professor James Cooper, Director of Proyecto ACCESO at California Western School of Law, was awarded the Ministry of Justice medal by Patricia Pérez Goldberg, Chile’s Minister of Justice.
Working with his colleagues, Professor Cooper has spent more than 15 years helping to implement judicial reform in Chile and has partnered with many of the major stakeholders, institutions, and universities in the Andean country.
Proyecto ACCESO has trained leaders of country’s justice system and lawyers in the skills necessary to transition from an inquisitorial legal system to an adversarial system similar to that of the United States. This has been a critical change to Chile’s criminal procedures that have been in place since Independence. Proyecto ACCESO’s accomplishments were recently featured in USA TODAYand on the Chilean Ministry of Justice’s website.
Please see this link to California Western School of Law for more information: http://www.kintera.org/site/c.5oJHLWPvFdJUG/b.8715697/k.1B32/California_Western_Professor_Receives_Prestigious_Chilean_Ministry_of_Justice_Medal.htm
Judge Juan Guzmán Visits California Western School of Law
Retired Judge Juan Guzmán, the legendary Chilean jurist who was the first to indict General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, visited California Western School of Law in mid-February 2014 to meet with students and faculty and to deliver the 2014 S. Houston Lay Lecture.
It was after General Pinochet returned from London in 2000 after more than 500 days under house arrest that Judge Guzmán was able to prosecute the Chilean ex-President, and Head of the Armed Forces, and Senator for Life. Judge Guzmán consolidated about two hundred criminal complaints filed against members of the Chilean armed forces and secret police, DINA (later the CAN), for violations that took place during the dictatorship which last 17 years (1973-1990).
Judge Guzmán also spoke to California Western’s Amnesty International chapter and met with faculty and students to promote a dialogue about the rule of law in the Americas and the needs for creativity in the practice of law. Judge Guzmán has been a Supervising Attorney in the Chile Summer Program’s Practicum Component, an internship program for U.S. law students in Santiago de Chile and he continues to inspire students and human rights advocates around the world.
The S. Houston Lay Lecture Series is named after the late Professor S. Houston Lay, who pursued a distinguished career with the U.S. Department of State, the American Bar Foundation, and California Western School of Law, where he taught international law courses and founded the California Western International Law Journal. Past speakers include U.N. Undersecretary-General Brian Urquhart, Professor Chalmers Johnson, and Richard Goldstone, Former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
During his visit, Judge Guzmán and ACCESO Director Professor James Cooper appeared live on the morning news program of Spanish-language television station Univision’s Despierta San Diego. See the clip here: http://www.univisionsandiego.com/2014/01/15/entrevista-con-juez-que-proceso-a-dictador/.
For more information about Judge Guzmán’s visit to San Diego, see http://www.kintera.org/site/c.5oJHLWPvFdJUG/b.8965179/k.6789/Former_Chilean_Judge_Tells_Compelling_Story_of_Pinochet_Prosecution.htm.
California Western School of Law Student Interns with Legendary Former Judge Juan Guzmán
ARCIS University recently reopened after a protracted struggle between university authorities, the Chilean government, the Carabineros (national police), and striking students. Burning tires, tear gas from the police and total chaos near the university’s building limits is the norm. It seems like an odd place for an internship, but that is where Kim Marcus, a law student from the United States interned. Marcus interned alongside Judge Guzmán, the legendary prosecutor who pursued General Pinochet and associates for human rights violations. Marcus has a background in forensic anthropology and Judge Guzmán was an investigating magistrate in Chile’s old criminal law system that used such forensics and pioneered investigative techniques.
Judge Guzman was considered a conservative for many but a hero to others as he pursued the perpetrators of human rights atrocities against Chileans. That is why Marcus wanted to work with Judge Guzmán. Judge Guzman got in deep with his investigations, using science to determine how long iron bars (from train tracks) had been in the sea. These bars were used to wear down political prisoners thrown out of airplanes and helicopters.
On April 30, 2014, Judge Guzmán was appointed the new Director of the ARCIS University’s Law School as the Communist Party withdrew funding and students took the barricades. Marcus experienced Chile like no one else.
Here’s what Marcus wrote about her first day of her internship with Judge Guzman, the very week he was first assuming the Directorship of ARCIS University’s Law School:
The first day of my internship was a unique experience to say the least. I headed off to the Universidad of ARCIS with Judge Guzman around 2:00 pm. He was supposed to sit in on a Bar exam for a sick colleague and we were already late and rushing. As soon as we got close to ARCIS the traffic started backing up. I noticed a plume of grey smoke ahead of us, but I did not think anything of it. Judge Guzman’s phone started ringing and although I do not speak Spanish, I could tell there was a sense of urgency in the conversation. He hung up the phone and said calmly while slightly chuckling, “I think that smoke is coming from the school.”
Of course, as a normal American, I became worry and started wondering if the school was on fire or if a bomb went off. I asked Judge Guzman if everything was alright and again he responds calmly, “Oh yes…the students are just protesting again.” Protesting? Again? His phone rang again and I overheard another conversation with overtones of urgency. He hanged up and said, “well, I have to go to a meeting, so I will leave you with my secretary and he will show you around.” Before I asked what kind of meeting, we arrived at ARCIS to the pile of burning tires, masked students, Carabineros in full riot gear, and a few fire trucks. I asked Judge Guzman if he was worried and he said while laughing, “No, this happens at least once a month."
"The students get angry, they protest, they burn things, and then they go away.” There were too many questions floating around in my head, so I just shut up and watched him maneuver his car around the protest and into the entry of the parking garage that he normally uses to park his car. He honked his horn but the gate did not open. Two times more and no luck. He assumed that because of the protest, they were not going to open the garage so he said with a smile, “we’ll just park on the street.”
We got out of the car, by the time we got around the corner, the burning tires were now just a melted pile of tires in a wet street, and the people had mostly scattered. We walked around the building to the entrance and I saw more smoke, or what I thought was smoke. I thought there was another fire that had started. We walked right into the cloud of smoke, which instantaneously started burning my eyes and throat. I realized it was not ordinary smoke when I started coughing and the tears started pouring down my face. In between coughs I asked Judge Guzman frantically, what is this? What is happening? Again, he replied calmly and with a smile as tears came down his cheeks, “It is tear gas.” People were literally running out of the building.
We were walking right in, no reservations. He told me the air would clear once we were inside. I had my face buried in his jacket. We walked into the quad area where people, I am assuming other faculty, greeted the judge, everyone slightly coughing and rubbing their eyes. He introduced me to his secretary and almost immediately, he took off to his emergency meeting. I was taken to an office where I began my first official day of work at ARCIS. It was anything but just another day at the office.
Marcus eventually provided the foundation for a chapter in Judge Guzmán’s new book on human rights. Her internship was a success in so many ways, not because of the tear gas or chaos or even a sense of reality of how most of Chile lives, but because she was able to spend time with a great jurist and humanitarian, Judge Juan Guzmán.
California Western School of Law Professors Participate in On-Line Program for Bolivian Lawyers, Judges and Community Leaders
On October 17, 2013, Professor James Cooper, Director of Proyecto ACCESO, gave a lecture on legal pluralism and the challenges in protecting human rights in Bolivia (“Pluralismo Legal y los Desafíos a la Protección de Derechos Humanos en Bolivia”), to law students, faculty, law enforcement officials, judges and community leaders at the Facultad de Ciencas Políticas y Sociales, Carerra de Derecho, Universidad Técnica de Oruro (UTO), in Oruro, Bolivia. This was part of an experimental distance learning program in continuing legal education for the small city in southwestern Bolivia. For Professor Cooper, “this lecture serves as a first pass for understanding the evolving plurinational educational model that has attended legal reform changes in Bolivia. Legal pluralism is alive and well in Bolivia, but fundamental protections and due process principles like equality under the law, however, must not be put at risk to satisfy desires of self-determination.”
Professor Tim Casey, a former Fullbright Scholar at the Universidad San Andrés in Buenos Aires, also participated in the on-line program. On October 30, 2013, he lectured on “Desafios modernos en la educación legal: la ética y las habilidades” to the assembled audience of legal professionals at UTO in Oruro, Bolivia. Professor Casey explained his lecture as follows: “In the twenty-first century legal education will adapt to become more focused on the teaching of ethics and skills. The acquisition of propositional knowledge - the ability to know or repeat some bit of information - will become obsolete as our databases secure infinite amounts of information that is available to us instantaneously. The ability to skillfully and ethically use that massive repository of information will be the primary challenge for our students - the lawyers of the next generation. Our responsibility lies in finding better ways to teach the critical skills and ethical values necessary for the practice of law in the twenty-first century.”
Minister of Justice of Chile receives Honorary Law Degree from California Western School of Law
The Minister of Justice of Chile, Patricia Pérez Goldberg, received an honorary law degree (LL.D. or Doctor Honoris Causa) on April 26, 2013, in San Diego from California Western School of Law. Having worked in Chile for more than a decade and a half, California Western through Proyecto ACCESO has been on the forefront of legal reform in both criminal and civil procedure.
Minister Pérez served as Chief Counsel of the Legal Assistance Corporation of the Region de Valparaiso and was part of the Research Unit of the Public Defense Office of Valparaiso when she first collaborated with Proyecto ACCESO. She has worked with Proyecto ACCESO's team on the development of drug treatment courts. She co-wrote a chapter for the book Justicia Penal y Adicciones: Tribunales de tratamiento como alternativa a la sanción, published by Proyecto ACCESO, Fundación Paz Ciudadana, and Lexis Publishing Chile in 2007.
Patricia Pérez Goldberg earned her law degree from the University of Valparaíso in 1999 and holds Masters degrees in Criminal Law and Criminal Science from the Catholic University of Valparaíso. She holds multiple post-graduate diplomas including those in Criminal Procedure Reform from the University of Chile in 2001, Current Trends and Fundamentals of Criminal Law from the Catholic University of the North in 2002, and Human Rights and Democratization from the Human Rights Center at the University of Chile in 2005, where she earned highest honors.
In 2007, Minister Pérez earned additional professional training focused on “Strengthening the Rule of Law through Training Justice Operators in Human Rights” from the University of Chile, and in “Public Management with a Gender Perspective” at FLACSO-Chile.
She held teaching positions at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso and Adolfo Ibañez University. She also taught post-graduate courses at the University of Chile and the University of Valparaíso. For her commitment to public service, Minister Pérez was chosen as one of the Top 100 Female Leaders of Chile in 2007.
She was appointed Vice-Minister of Justice by Chilean President Sebastián Piñera in 2010. As Vice-Minister, she supported community sentences, the implementation of electronic monitoring, and the establishment of drug courts throughout the country. She also worked to improve the Juvenile Justice System, employed a gender-focused approach in prison, and has strongly supported the modification of Chile’s criminal procedure rules.
Minister Pérez Goldberg was appointed as Minister of Justice in December 2012 and is one of only four women to ever serve as Chile’s Minister of Justice in more than 175 years. She is currently leading the charge to create and promote a new Civil Procedure Code for Chile.
Intellectual Property Law in China and Taiwan: Challenges and Opportunities
On February 8, 2013, Dr. Kevin Tsai, one of the shining lights of the Intellectual Property Bar in Taiwan and China, came to California Western School of Law to discuss recent trends in the protection of IP rights in Asia. Dr. Tsai earned his Masters degree in Intellectual Property Law and his LL.D., which focused on the intersection between biotechnology and the law, at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Dr. Tsai received his LL.M. degree from the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire and his LL.B. degree from Fu Jen Catholic University in New Taipei City, Taiwan. He is the Managing Director of Farmar International Patent & Law Office in Taipei, Taiwan, where several students, including California Wstern LL.M. graduate Jenny Lee and J.D. graduate Amy Hsaio, have worked over the years.
“Dr. Tsai is one of the leading IP attorneys in Taiwan and China. He understands the legal culture of both countries very well, and the many challenges that rights holders face globally as they do business in Asia,” said Professor James M. Cooper, Director of California Western’s International Legal Studies Program and Director of Proyecto ACCESO. “IP rights and the innovation which they protect will be one of the main issues for future national security and sustained economic growth in President Obama's 'Pivot to Asia'.”
His talk “Practicing Intellectual Property Law in China and Taiwan: Challenges and Opportunities” was attended by 30 students and several faculty members and was covered by local Chinese language media.
Please click the link below to read the article in Mandarin about Dr. Tsai’s visit to California Western School of Law.
| Dr. Kevin Tsai_IP Law in China, Taiwan_advisory_020613.pdf |
| Kevin Tsai speech_021513.pdf |
The Second Conference of Red Inocente was a Success
From October 10 to 12, 2013, several members of California Western School of Law’s faculty and administration attended and spoke at the second annual conference of innocence projects in Latin America. Red Inocente, co-founded by Professor Justin Brooks, Director of the California Innocence Project, and Professor James Cooper, Director of Proyecto ACCESO, now features membership from many countries around the Americas. Defense attorneys, public interest advocates and other stakeholders from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and the United States came to the Jorge Borges Cultural Center in downtown Buenos Aires for the three-day conference which featured films, seminars, and workshops.
Host Enrique Piñeyro of Argentina's Innocence Project and legendary film director (El Rati Horror Show) ensured the conference was a complete success. Congressman Manuel Garrido, California Western School of Law's Dean and President Niels B. Schaumann, Carla Schaumann, and a number of other dignities were also in attendance.
Professor James Cooper, Director of ACCESO, Speaks at International Conference Organized by the Attorney-General’s Office of Chile
On November 26, 2013, Professor James Cooper, Director of Proyecto ACCESO, spoke at an international conference at the University of Chile about the evolving role of the public prosecutor in Chile.
Held at the beautiful Magna Aula at the Facultad de Derecho at the Universidad de Chile, this two day conference also brought a number of international experts including legendary legal reform founder Professor Alberto Binder, German criminal procedure expert Professor Dr. Kai Ambos, and Colombian prosecutor Yeni Fonseca who currently works on prosecuting human rights violations in Guatemala. Attorney-General Sabbas Chahuán hosted the assembled team of experts as over 250 attendees from the Fiscalia Nacional joined in celebrating 15 years of this institution of law enforcement created in the early part of the criminal procedure reform of Chile.
Professors Klein and Thyfault from California Western School of Law Teach in Post-Graduate Program in Argentina
Professors Kenneth Klein and Roberta Thyfault traveled to Argentina to teach in a comparative law program at the Catholic University of Argentina in Paraná. The program - El Estado de Derecho del siglo XXI: Administración, Justicia y Derechos – has been taught by professors from Argentina, Chile, Germany and the United States.
This is the second annual program for lawyers, judges and other legal professionals co-sponsored by California Western School of Law, the Heidelberg Center for Latin America, Universidad de Chile Escuela de Derecho, and Universidad Católica de Argentina, Facultad “Teresa de Avila” in Paraná. On April 19 and 20, 2013, Professor Klein provided the students with a comparative view of the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law. On July 3 and 4, 2013, Professor Thyfault explored the U.S. legal approach to national security issues.
For more information, please visit the website for the post-graduate program at Universidad Católica de Argentina, Facultad “Teresa de Avila” – Paraná at http://www.uca.edu.ar/index.php/comunicacion/agenda/es/universidad/comunicacion-institucional/agenda/actividad/1203/grupo/9. To enroll please contact [email protected]
