Vt. Law School Gets $1.8 Million

For Program in China

By M. D. Drysdale

Vermont Law School (VLS) has received a $1.8-million, three-year grant, the largest in its history, to partner with a Chinese law school on strategies to control environmental damage, including global warming.

The China initiative is the most dramatic flowering of an international involvement that has been growing at VLS for several years. The South Royalton law school also has partners in Montreal, Karelia (Russia), Italy, France, and Spain.

The grant is from the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) and it is hoped the project will receive funding from Chinese sources as well.

VLS's partner in the venture is Sun Yat-Sen University School of Law (SYSU) which was visited by three VLS academicians in 2004 to set up the ambitious program.

The Chinese project will include up to six Chinese students and professors visiting the South Royalton campus of VLS, as well as conferences in China and professional collaborations between students and teachers here and in Guang-dong Province and its capital Guangzhou.

VLS Prof. Bruce Duthu, a former administrator as well as an expert in Native American legal issues, will serve as project director.

China, Prof. Duthu told The Herald this week, has experienced a quick industrialization that has left it with "all the negatives" of that process—bad air, bad water, millions of migrant workers, and terrible public health issues. In the face of those problems, China has developed very few solutions in the way of regulation or other legal oversight.

And China's unique path—a Communist government presiding over free-enterprise industrialization—means it must construct a whole new legal system and the constitutional philosophy to go with it.

Professors at SYSU had "a desperate need for more legal help and talent, especially anyone with experience with international law," Duthu explained. For that reason, they are enthusiastic about receiving American cooperation.

Internationalism

The grant from AID spotlights the growing international scope of VLS programs. Recently the law school inaugurated a dual-degree program with the University of Cergy-Pontoise, in which students in four years can graduate ready to take the bar exam—both in the U.S. and in France.

Prof. Linda O. Smiddy is director of VLS's International and Comparative Law Program. She noted that the collaboration with SYSU will have to explore such basic issues as the relationship of environmental policy to law and governmental structures, including the laws governing property and trade.

The first direct result of the new grant, Prof. Duthu said, will be a trip by himself and another VLS representative to China later this year to plan a series of workshops and conferences. While there, they will begin recruiting Chinese students and practicing lawyers to take classes in South Royalton.

At least one position will be created at VLS to administer the SYSU exchange; only Chinese-speakers need apply.

The new collaboration builds on preëxisting ties between the two institutions. SYSU Prof. Li Zhi Ping was a visiting scholar here during the fall of 2004, the same year that Duthu and two colleagues traveled there for the first time.

Duthu explained that Guang-dong Province, in the south of China a couple of hours from Hong Kong, is one of the provinces where industrial growth is advancing rapidly, including textiles and computer-related industries.

The AID grant was engineered through the offices of US Sen. Patrick Leahy, who said it will "strengthen China's environmental laws and policies."

Dean Geoffrey Shields noted the problems that need to be solved are "of great consequence, not only to our two nations, but to the world as a whole." They will include technical training and joint research on energy alternatives that could minimize greenhouse gass emissions.

A key participant will be the Institute for Energy and the Environment at VLS, directed by Michael Dworkin, a former commissioner on the Vermont Public Service Board.