News and Events

Temple Law School and FWLA to Provide MCLE Credit for US-Qualified Attorneys (FWLA June Meeting)

Temple University School of Law, Tokyo Campus is pleased to offer one MCLE credit to U.S. qualified attorneys who attend the Foreign Women Lawyers' Association (FWLA) meeting, "Send Lawyers, Guns and Money: Rebuilding the Afghan Legal System" with guest speaker Professor Veronica Taylor.

Date:: Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Time:: Speaker will begin at 8:00 p.m.; a light buffet dinner will be served from 7:00 p.m.
Venue:: TMI in association with Simmons & Simmons - Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, 23rd Floor conference room (Map)
RBA Meeting Fees:: Members ¥3,000
Full-Time Student Members ¥1,500
Non-Members and Guests ¥5,000
Student Non-Members and Guests ¥2,000 (please present student ID)
RSVP:: RSVPs are necessary to facilitate catering arrangements and building security procedures. Please RSVP to fwla.events@gmail.com, if possible, by Friday, May 30th.
Entrance & Security Procedures:: Entrance to office buildings in the Mori Tower is strictly controlled. On the Lower Lobby ("LL") Level, please check in at the general reception desk and say that you are visiting Rika Beppu at Simmons & Simmons. If you did not RSVP by the deadline, you will be asked to present two business cards or other form of identification to receive a visitor's pass. Afterwards please follow the signpost to the main reception of Simmons & Simmons and TMI Associates on the 23rd Floor. The conference room is just beyond the reception desk to the right.

Professor Taylor has spent the past four years directing a six-year legal reform project in Afghanistan. She recently spent a month in Afghanistan and her presentation will focus on explaining the current status of the Afghan legal system. Afghanistan's legal system is particularly interesting at this time because the country is in a pre-post conflict state. After six years of donor-assisted state-building, Afghanistan remains fragile; the country is still at war and the capital, Kabul, is not completely secure. The conditions that kept Afghanistan poor historically continue today: illiteracy and poor governance, porous borders, hostile neighbors, successive foreign invasions, a Taliban insurgency, a narcotics economy and a profoundly corrupt government administration. Currently, Afghanistan has had no transitional justice - no war crimes have been prosecuted and no former commanders have been held accountable for the destruction of the country after the Soviet Union withdrew in the early 1990s. Former warlords are now drug lords and many of them serve with impunity in government and the Cabinet. All of this seems to foreclose the emergence of a viable state, yet millions of dollars of development aid have flowed into Afghanistan to build new institutions - among them the legal system.

What are the prospects of achieving stability and re-building the legal system when 21st century modes of legal technical assistance meet pre-20th century institutions in a conflict setting? To find out, we hope you will join us for Professor Taylor's highly informative and topical presentation. Please invite your friends and colleagues to attend this meeting.

In an effort to assist U.S. attorneys in Japan satisfy their various CLE requirements, the Law School, as an Accredited Provider of Pennsylvania CLE credits, holds, on its own and in conjunction with other legal organizations in Japan, special events throughout the year in which U.S. qualified attorneys in Japan may be able to receive U.S. MCLE credits (please check with your state to confirm acceptance of PA MCLE credits by your state's CLE board). If you are interested in being notified of our future events, please e-mail us at law@tuj.ac.jp to be included on our e-mailing list.