 Okay, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel here on Think Tech. Doing life in the law today was Judge Shackley Rafferro. He's the retired chief judge of the Second Circuit. That's Maui County, and was doing that for a long time. He retired, and he is a member of our board directors. We are delighted to have him here. And today, he's recently back from China, and you can talk about the Jessup program in China. So we're calling this in a mysterious way, Jessup in China. So Keska, Seika, Sasha, Shackley, what is Jessup in China? Okay, it's the Chinese rounds of the Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, which is an annual international law competition for law students. And let me just say this. There are now about 87 countries participating, law schools from 87 countries, around 550 law schools among those countries. That's huge. And each of those countries has their own individual rounds to select the best teams. And then those teams go on to Washington D.C. in April of each year, and compete for the title of the best team. And all these international schools, law schools, and teams from those schools compete with each other. And I attended that four times, and they have a lot of really nice social events that the law students from all these nations can intermingle and get to know each other and form relationships. There's diplomatic effect here. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Philip C. Jessup was one of the drafters, as I understand it, of the UN Charter. He was a Harvard Law professor. And then I think after he passed away, his admirers put together this competition in his honor. And it has grown and grown and grown. It's quite old, actually. It's been around for a long time. Must be 50 years at least. I have participated as a volunteer judge in Russia several times, four times. And then in China, this is my ninth year. This is the 15th anniversary of the program in China this year. And about 50 law schools in China participated. There's something like 600 law schools in China, by the way. There's a lot of law schools. There's something too, doesn't it? Yes, yes, it's very interesting. Because at the end of the Cultural Revolution, I don't think there were any law schools. Yeah, and there were law firms, so that matter, you know? Yes, that's right. So that's all been created during that period of time in that particular country. Let me just say that the program is conducted in English, the competition. So that means people like me can go there and participate. And it's not through translation, which would be very cumbersome. Every year, a group of law professors basically put together a complicated problem for the students. And then they also provide a list of materials. And for the judges, they produce a judges gouge so that the judges can get up to speed on their international law. And it's a very, very interesting program. Well, I'm tacking some of that. Okay. Why are you involved? What makes you travel all these places? I don't expect anybody's writing you a check for that, by the way. No. I know. Why do you want to do this? What's in it for you? Oh, well, I guess just the satisfaction. I'm a big believer in citizen diplomacy. And I think that going to other places and, you know, one of the things I do is I, together with a colleague, we teach an extra day on the law. And in this case, the common law evidence system to assist the students and to try to just, you know, spread knowledge about the law and the legal system and justice and due process of law. Talk about that. And I think it makes the world a better place. And I feel good about doing it. Yeah, that's great. I mean, it really is a tremendous payback after being a judge for all the years you were a judge. But, you know, one thing I mentioned to you before, you know, I get a disconnect on this. My disconnect is that China has had, China's bar association, so to speak, its legal infrastructure is really new. It's really new. I mean, it was not 10 years ago that they didn't have big firms. So now all of a sudden they have firms that are huge. They have hundreds all over in major cities. You know, the same law firm in major cities, hundreds of lawyers. And it was not too many years ago that law firms were hampered because the government didn't want you to do this, that, and the other thing. And they limited you in what you could say and do and the cases you took. And they were trying to influence the cases. All that seems to have changed. And maybe Jessup is a kind of indicator of that. Do you see that? Well, I do know that the best Jessup teams get hired by the law firms there. Here, there, there, there. How about the government? Both, actually. You know, I don't know about the government, but I know that the law firms think highly of Jessup participation in China. But I do know that, you know, I've just heard this from people that initially the foreign law firms would go there to assist foreign businesses in their investments in China. Okay, and then gradually there are more and more Chinese lawyers starting Chinese law firms. And so that's changed over time. The Chinese law firms are becoming fully capable of handling business transactions for the Chinese companies. And so I think that there's more competition now between the Chinese law firms and the foreign law firms. Oh, sure. That's what I've heard. Yeah, I remember hearing about this a long time ago. I've got some pictures I can show you. Yeah, let's look at them. I have a number of pictures taken from my last trip. This is just out the window of my hotel room. This is Beijing. Yeah, in Beijing. Just to give you an idea of what it looks like in general. Next. Another shot. See the mountains in the background? Beijing sits in a kind of basin. And because of that, when the coal-fired industries get going, that basin can fill up a smog really quickly and you can't see those mountains. This is an exceptionally clear day. And off to the right, about 25 miles away is where the Great Wall is. And then several hundred years ago, maybe 400 years ago, when the Manchurians came into China and conquered it and started the Manchu dynasty, the last dynasty, that's where they broke through the Great Wall just a few miles away. Beijing was right there, one of the oldest cities in the world. Oh, these are two of my students from... I taught a summer school there at the University of International Relations a couple of years ago. And these are two of my students, and they were nice enough to come and have dinner with me. One of the ladies works at the... I think it's a patent office for the government and the other one works at the propaganda department for the Communist Party. So they're doing well after their graduate from law school. This is just a building. You see the snow piled up there, so it's pretty cold. This is just street scenes. I went out walking around in the morning. This just gives you an idea what it looks like. Beijing street scene, lots of cars, but you still see a fair amount of bicycles like this. And you see 24-hour sundry shops, another big building. Those are all bicycle stands. Next, another street scene. And another... Okay, this is Renmin University of China. This is a huge, huge university. And we... The jesset took place at the law school at Renmin University. This is a bus that they used to bus us back and forth from the competition for those of us who were foreign judges. We had a group of about 35 or 40 foreign judges and also Chinese judges who had many of whom were graduates of participating in the jesset program. And they bussed us back and forth to the competition every day. This is in the law school itself where the faculty lounge was. And the next slide is a poster for the actual competition. They provided a judges room for us. This is... Wen Shijiu is the Chinese gentleman on the left there. He runs the program in China. He's a senior professor at Renmin University Law School, a really great guy and a great man. And he and Carol Kalinowski, who's the lady there, who's an American from Washington, D.C., she's very involved in the jesset program in general. The two of those folks working together created the jesset program in China. And as I mentioned, this is the 15th anniversary of the starting of that program. And Professor Zhu tries to locate the competition in Beijing one year and then alternates to another city in China the next year. So I've had the opportunity through nine years of participation to go to a number of other cities in China. This is just the judges room. These are some of the folks who came as judges. A gentleman was from Finland, and I think I forget where the lady was from. I can't remember. Sorry. Next. This is just the judges room where they would serve us lunch. Very nice room. And so we had a place to hang out between the competition. We were very busy. Each session is about two hours long, at least two hours. And in the first two days, I served on eight of those. So they kept us very busy. And of course, the same people tend to come, so you make nice friendships. This is me and my friend Mati. He is a lawyer from Finland, and he comes every year. And so we strike up our friendship again every year and we have a very nice social time with him and other friends that we've made. I like the outfit. It looks like something you might wear in Maui, eh? I think that they get right. That is the, I guess, what they wear at international courts. Yeah, it looks like that. It's a beautiful robe, actually. It's all made of silk, quite different from the one I used to use. We'll take a short break, Jack. We didn't come back and try to make sense of this for China, for the U.S., for the program in the world and what it means. And I'd like to ask you some questions about exactly how it's conducted also. Okay. Hello, I'm Michael North, inviting you to join us on The Art of Thinking Smart every second Thursday at 12 noon here at the beautiful ThinkTech Studios in downtown Honolulu. I'm guest hosting for David Chang of Wealthbridge. Now, we're talking to Hawaii's most intelligent accomplished leaders about what makes them successful in their professional lives. By absorbing their practical wisdom, all of us can think ahead, think deeper, and become more successful ourselves. We look forward to seeing you on The Art of Thinking Smart. Thank you for watching ThinkTech. I'm Grace Chang, the new host for Global Connections. You can find me here live every Thursday at 1 p.m., where we'll be talking to people around the islands or visiting the islands who are connected in various aspects of global affairs. So, please tune in and Aloha and thanks for watching. Okay. You know, that was Grace Chang, exactly. She's the host of Global Connections on Thursdays. She'll be around shortly. You have a lot of programs that have international flavor. We do. We have three areas of programs. One is art, community, environment. One is law, international business. And the third is science, technology, and energy. Great. Those are our categories in general. Terrific. This one would be... I guess this would be science... No, not science. Law, environmental... Oh, I got them all mixed up. Law, international, and business. That's what this would be. Anyway, why don't we go through the rest of your slides? Okay. Okay. Next step. This is one of the group pictures of the teams. Not all the people were on the team. I guess some were supporters. But let me just say you had two students arguing for each side, applicant and respondent. And then during the course of the competition, they had to be able to argue either side. And then they could have other students helping them. They have a seated there are the judges. And they usually use a panel of three. The gentleman on the right there is from Romania. And he teaches at a law school in China. A number of people who turn up to serve as judges do that in China. They're teaching at various universities in China. And the lady on the right is a Chinese national who serves as a judge with us. So it's nice you get to meet all these people, which is great. This is another group picture of another different team. And I'm trying to remember who everybody is. I can't remember offhand. Oh, this must have been the quarterfinals, because there's five of us, five judges in this. And two fellows on my right are from Singapore. I've gotten to know them pretty well over the years. And the man on the far left is from Houston, Texas. And the lady on my left, I can't remember where she's from. But this would have been one of the better teams because it was at the quarterfinals. This is one team standing behind you? No, two teams. And this would be another quarterfinal because we have five judges there. Let's see. The lady on the right with the gray hair is from California. I don't remember where the next lady is from. The lady on the left is from Australia. She's a barrister in Australia. And the gentleman on the far left is an American who teaches at one of the law schools in Beijing and lives in Beijing. I notice in each of these pictures you're at the center of the group of judges. What does that mean? I ordinarily got appointed by professors you to serve as the president of the board to keep order. That's great. I once had a funny story. We were in a session once and there was a guy sitting in the back and as the students were arguing, his cell phone went off. And I said, please, you know, turn your cell phone off. Please resume. The cell phone goes off again. And I started getting annoyed. And I quieted down and we started up again. The cell phone went off the third time and I ordered him to get out of the... I thought I was back in my cord and... And I ordered him to leave the room and we got into quite a confrontation there. And finally it all settled down but Professor Zhu uses it as a story to the judges to tell them, you know, you're in charge and you make sure that the students... Oh, how easy. The provocation. Yeah, and the students, you know, there's important time for them. They prepared long and hard and we want to make sure that they have the best experience possible. That's so interesting. To me it's... Which for you? Would you have done the same thing in Maui? Yes. Yeah, of course. I would have had more authority there. Here the guy didn't know what I was talking about after traveling. Now this is the final competition. So we have nine judges I think and the student who is there back to us is actually arguing a case. You know, most of the law students are women in China. Next. This is Professor Zhu thanking some of his staff. He has a very large staff who do a terrific job. He's a nice young girl. He was kind enough to give them a couple of roses which was very charming. And he always makes sure that all of the judges, us judges who travel from far away places to be there receives a little something and a very nice little plaque in our honor and this just happens to be me receiving mine. It was very kind of him to do that. He's a very kind man. And this is... See, during the competition you're not allowed to speak with the students at all and tell the final banquet dinner which is this is a picture of that and then you have the opportunity and you're encouraged to sit at a table especially with students who you judge and they know who you are and they want to talk to you about what did I do and how did I do and so on. And these are students from the University of International Relations where I taught a couple of years ago and they sought me out and I had a very, very nice conversation with them. This is the last of my, I think, one more photo. This is just a beautiful sunset view from my hotel room. It shows you how pretty it can be there. But after the last banquet, Carol Kalinowski and I put on an extra day of training for the students and we talk about theory of the case, theme of the case. I talk about common law evidence. Now their system isn't a common law system but I think the common law evidence rules of relevancy and so on help them to understand how to organize a huge collection of facts and issues and decide which evidence is most important for which issues and how they can organize their arguments. So we do that. That's expanding over time and is very popular with the students. So we are able to make an additional contribution and talk in terms of the common law a little bit. So it's a civil law country? Apparently, yes. I think it's a version. I'd say civil law tradition rather than the system. What's the difference between the way it's done in China and the way it's done here? I can't exactly tell you because my understanding is it's very difficult to actually go to a trial in China. I've toured courtrooms but I've never seen a courtroom in action. That's my understanding. So the Mood Court is like in this country, it's an appellate court, right? Yes. And so you're arguing points of law. The law is important there. And I just wonder, because people say that China is necessarily a nation of law and that the law bends a lot and maybe it's politically affected, what did you see in terms of the respect of the participants for the rule of law? I think my impression is they're very serious about learning as much as they can and they can argue from case authority although they understand that they don't have a system of precedent that are stare decisis in their system but they understand what it is and they adapt to it pretty quickly, I thought. Well, it's interesting. It's the rubber on the road. You want to explain to them what stare decisis is and the rule of precedent and they're going to understand it and maybe even incorporate it in some of their arguments. You can raise it in questioning the students. You can say, you've cited a case to me. What is it about that case that you think is helpful to the court in deciding this case? And what authority does that case have? And they'll argue that authority to you. They expect to be able to explain whether that authority is binding or not and if not, why not? And then, if it's not, how else can it be helpful? So the impact of the case of the precedent is not the same as in the U.S. but there is an impact of that precedent. Well, just like in real international law there's no case precedent theory in international law. It's all, you know, by analogy, I guess, a big way to put it. I was telling you the story earlier. I have a friend from Russia who served on the Rwandan court for a while, a very distinguished jurist, and I asked him once, I said, you have these judges from the civil law system and from the common law system who are appointed to these courts. When you folks are sitting down trying to decide these cases, do you have rules of evidence? I mean, how do you hash this out? And he indicated to me that the common law is judges are... I think what he was saying is that they are a little more influential in a sense because they have these traditions of using the rules of evidence to decide cases and decide what evidence is relevant and not relevant, whereas my understanding is not so prominent in the other systems. So what are the rules of evidence like in China? Are they like the American rules of evidence? I don't know if they have any. But that's a common law concept. Okay, yes, I guess so. So you spoke before they would get a problem, maybe a complex problem, and they would have to make their arguments over that. And I guess you sat on a number of these proceedings in this past trip. Were all the proceedings, all the proceedings involved the same fact pattern? Yes. What was the fact pattern? Well... Just summarized. Gosh, I don't know if I could do that. It's a very complicated... I have to sit down and make some notes because they run together in my hand and everyone's different. Was it international law? It's all international law. You know, I can't do it on the fly. I'd have to sit down and make a note. You should have told me ahead of time. So when they get up and argue the case, what are they arguing? Everything and anything? Are the questions they need to argue? Is that identified? Well, they tend to be a little wooden, you know, as a first or second year law student. It would be. And the judges jump in right away with lots of questions. And so most of the proceeding sort of revolves around whatever questions the judges are in. The judges are all over the place. But that's good experience. Sure. It's a hot court. Well, that's what they call it. Are you a hot court judge? I try to be a moderate because otherwise the students don't have an opportunity to make their arguments. You want to hear them argue? Yes. You want to encourage them. Because part of this process is to grade their oral ability. And so you want to let them have it. And part of it is answering the questions, of course, but you want to also let them have an opportunity to kind of shape what they say and then go from there. Are they prepared by virtue of their law school training to do the JESA procedure? I mean, or do they have to learn it fresh by virtue of the procedure itself? Well, they don't have... My understanding in the Chinese legal training system is they don't have opportunities to do practical lawyer skill development things like this, like moot courts. But they do work very, very hard. So they come in very well prepared. Only in a few instances did students try to read their arguments. In other words, most of them... You don't encourage them to do that. No, we discourage it actually as you would here. But most of them don't need it. I mean, they come in and they're ready. Why does it mean so much to them? I think just because they... Well, one is they don't have the opportunity to get this kind of training otherwise. And so this program is highly regarded in China. And also it provides an opportunity for the top five teams to go to Washington, D.C. Okay. And the JESA organization takes their way for that. No, each nation takes care of their finances. China is behind this. China is supporting this. The disconnect I get on that is that this is likely to change the way law students think about the law. It's likely to expose them to different thought processes and maybe get a view of common law and the law of civil law. It's going to stretch their, you know, otherwise perhaps strict view of how to conduct a law practice. Does the Chinese government like that? Well, yes, because China exists in the world of international law, you know? They have international lawyers that represent China and, you know, recently they had a case involving the South China Sea. Oh, yeah. Did you cover that in JESA? No. That would have been a little hot. No, well, we stay away from things that would be counterproductive for this program. Yeah, you want the program to survive. Right. And we want to help students. I mean, that's what the program is for us, too. So I'm an ordinary lawyer, okay? I have not been a judge. Hardly, hardly. Not a, you know, a judge in civilian practice, anyway. But my question to you is, is it possible for me as an ordinary lawyer in the state of Hawaii to become involved as a judge in the JESA program in China? Yes, yes. That is something. Let me know if you're interested. I can help you. Oh, wow. This is great, Shackley. What you're doing is a great retirement thing, but it's more than that. It's for the benefit of the practice, for the better of the profession. It affects, you know, you're a citizen diplomat when you go and do this. And it's part of our extension, our outreach to China and so many other places. Well, it's a very inspiring experience for all of us who participate. It really is. And you have fine people like professors you who dedicated their lives to making this program available to, you know, hundreds and hundreds of law students in China. It's pretty amazing. It's important for the connection between our two countries. Absolutely. You're going back next year? Oh, yeah. I knew that. I'll go as long as I can. Thank you, Shackley. Great to have you here. Thank you, Jay. Aloha. All right. That's it.