Developing Rule of Law
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008By Erik Jensen
Erik Jensen is The Asia Foundation’s Senior Legal Advisor, a lecturer at the Stanford Law School and co-director of the law school’s Rule of Law Program. He is also an advisor to Stanford’s Afghanistan Legal Education Project.
From 1985 to 1989 I was a Senior Fulbright Scholar and a law consultant to The Asia Foundation’s office in Colombo, Sri Lanka. During that time, I also taught in Sri Lanka’s law schools. Last December, I was back in Sri Lanka and learned that a book I wrote during my days there, An Introduction to International Law from a Sri Lankan Perspective (Open University Press: 1989), was still the standard text. I suppose that I should have been flattered, but I was disappointed and saddened that they weren’t using a newer, updated text. There have been no updates to the book in nearly twenty years, two decades in which incredible developments in international law have taken place.
The Asia Foundation is deeply concerned about the quality of legal education across the developing world.
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