 You know, one of the things that, you know, you love about this country and you've got to test on those things these days is the immigrants, the boiling pot. And my family came from, believe it or not, Ukraine. And everybody I know came from somewhere. That's very rare that you find anybody who doesn't come from somewhere else. And that's what this show is about. So we have Chang Wang, and he's going to introduce our primary guest today, Tony Leung. And we're going to talk about the immigrant experience that Judge Leung has had. Chang, welcome to the show. Judge, welcome to the show. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Aloha, Jay. Good afternoon. Your honor. Very, very pleased to have you be on the nation of immigrants. Let me just say that Judge Leung is my role model and my hero. Everybody in Minnesota knows Judge Leung, not only in the Asian Pacific, Chinese American community, but to everybody in the legal community and everybody in the government. Judge Leung has been a legendary judge in the state of Minnesota. He is a first Asian Pacific American judge and the first Chinese American judge in the state of Minnesota. Judge Leung is currently a federal magistrate judge in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. Before his appointment for the federal bench, Judge Leung served for nearly 17 years as a state district court judge in Minnesota's fourth judicial district in Henningman County, now a very famous household name Henningman County where the trial of Derek Chauvin happened. He was first appointed to the state bench by Governor Arlene Carson in 1994. Before his elevation to the judiciary, Judge Leung was equity partner of a big law firm now named the figure Baker Daniels. Judge Leung received his bachelor degree with honors from Yale University and his jury doctor from New York University School of Law. Welcome Judge Leung. Thank you Chang and thank you Jay for inviting me to this program. Thank you for coming down Judge. I think it's a really a great story and I do have some questions about Chang's introduction. Number one is you know we have district courts here in Honolulu in Hawaii but they are below general jurisdiction courts and I wonder when you talk about a district court, a state district court in the district in the state system in Minneapolis there is that general jurisdiction or something else? Yes in Minnesota the state court system is divided into basically Supreme Court, the Intermediate Court of Appeals called the Court of Appeals and also then the district courts. The district courts are the general jurisdiction trial courts or in the state of Minnesota under the state system. For example of course the case that Chang referenced that would be conducted by a district judge or state district judge and in that case is state district judge Regina Chu who I know very well and who is a wonderful jurist. I'm getting into the United States Magistrate and United States District Court that is really something and that's a federal question if you will, a national question. That's a whole different experience to get into a job like that. Can you compare the two experiences for us? Yes I would say that both roles of course are you're acting in a judicial function but they're quite different. I would describe the state system as this is where the power hits the road, the rubber meets the road and the old race and by that I mean for example in criminal matters if something happens, if there's a something terrible that happens at night and there's a crime in state court if you're on duty for as a duty judge you'll get calls all hours of the night and it could be something very dramatic and so I've had law enforcement as a state judge come over and say can you sign a warrant on after hours and only to learn that they believe they're maybe a body part in a trunk for example so they're they can be that dramatic and it's very immediate on the needs. In the federal court in contrast you know especially let's say take the criminal side when you're on criminal duty in the federal courts you don't get nearly as many of the out of the regular hours types of calls because nature of the federal investigations are it isn't based on oh someone was shot this evening is bleeding on the street we need to get some evidence immediately before it you know finesse in nature the evidence goes away so it's it's quite different the the systems and the types of things that you do. Yeah and and my my sense of it just from the outside is that in the federal judiciary it's a sort of a national community in other words pretty close with the other judges with the federal clerks with judges and clerks and other districts it's um very it's a camaraderie that you don't find necessarily and a broader camaraderie that you don't find necessarily in the state courts you get to know other judges in other districts uh am i right and you and you compare notes with them and so forth. Oh absolutely um and one of the great pleasures actually of being a federal judge is that um you do need to meet together and conferences to keep up on the law and developments um in uh different aspects related to our duties and in that context we meet judges from all over the country and in the federal context we also do outreach and do rule of law type of work with other nations as well and in other areas for example I've been to Bangkok with the United States Patent and Trade Office um on conferences with ASEAN judges and ASEAN officials who are involved in patent trade for example so there it's quite exciting in terms of the scope of what you get into um and I think you're right today that there's a unique sense of a family and we often call it the federal family and um yeah in some ways you know people joke around about that uh from time to time but there really is um and it is a very supportive family so that if something happens in one area it really happens to everybody of other areas and people are aware of that and support each other. Yeah I've noticed that it's admirable actually so but there is a difference between being a magistrate and being a district court judge and uh in Hawaii you know every magistrate would like to be a district court judge but not all of them get there and there's a when I call it a political threshold that you have to cross before you can get there I don't believe a magistrate has to be confirmed by Congress but a district court judge needs to be confirmed by Congress and that changes the recipe doesn't it? Yes um I don't think there's much I did not have to get vetted by politicians on one side of the aisle or the other I was vetted by all of the district judges in our district the current actives as well as the seniors and I think it's I think it's very much a meritocracy in our selection. Wonderful it's good to hear we need meritocracy and we certainly need the rule of law oh my goodness anyway so let's talk about how you got there because it's an interesting passage so you came from Hong Kong you still speak any any Cantonese at all? Oh I I do I can get by with Cantonese but they um so I my first tongue was um Cantonese and um because I grew up in Hong Kong then when we emigrated to the U.S. my cousins um who had been over the U.S. and they sponsored us over um my aunt spoke and um my uncle spoke of a dialect of Cantonese called Aishan which is actually a very in the past of course it was actually the probably dominant dialect in the U.S. as far as Chinese immigrants because the earliest many of the earliest immigrants were from that area of China Aishan was a is a very poor area in terms of agriculture I remember the soil as when I visited for the first time it was noticeable how red it was and it just seemed like I don't know if this is the best growing type of soil and it because it was traditionally it was very poor that they sent people overseas to earn money whether it'd be in the South South China Seas area in Southeast Asia or even to the Philippines or Hawaii and the U.S. and other places and so many people in the U.S. actually the original Chinese immigrants many of them would have been from that area of China. Yeah so your family came over here you were about six years old um they they come over to um uh you know um uh to take possession of their multi-million dollar properties all over town uh or was or wasn't the the more the more customary immigrant story. Implications of that in terms of Hong Kong and China are very different uh in this sense um Hong Kong uh uh I think at that point I I think was really thriving and China at that time when we emigrated um China was in the beginnings of the uh culture revolution we emigrated here in 1966. Oh um you know at that time in China one of my concerns of my parents was there's such chaos in China with the culture revolution that um they also knew that the uh treaty the lease on Hong Kong is going to end in 97 and they knew that the Brits weren't exactly going to go and defend the people of Hong Kong nor should they frankly from uh going back because you know it was a lease I mean obviously Hong Kong's part of China and so um they um you know they thought the future was probably better for us here in the US and so they left but yeah China at that time believe me not many Chinese folks were at property in the US and I also were in the world and even when Hong Kong uh from uh our class of my class uh you know my parents class and you know we we didn't have property I believe me I'm only choking judge I know I know we were happy to have a flat to live in frankly. Judge I just realized that I have known you for 15 years and we never speak Mandarin Chinese so next time we meet I probably will speak Mandarin Chinese with you and yeah and you I'm from Beijing so you did come to Beijing in 1980s as a international exchange student and then you receive a diploma from Peking University that's my alma mater alma mater but could you share with us about your life your time in Beijing do you remember what the Beijing's 1980s look like to you I was in junior high and high school in 1980s. Yeah I I was in uh in 1981 um that summer and um it it really was one of those eye opening um and in some ways transformative events in my life transformative in a odd way in a sense that um when when I was uh in undergraduate um I really focused on Chinese American relations and just had a deep interest in in that area in fact I remember reading some articles I think Jerry Cohen or Jerome Cohen wrote at that time I had um probably I think that um after John King Fairbank um at Harvard I think after uh you know he started slowing down um I Jonathan Spence uh was probably in my view one of the pre-eminent um scholars of Chinese history in the West and I had the privilege of having his classes and so I was very interested in in China and I can say that Professor Spence who recently passed away he was the best that was the best his introduction to modern Chinese history is the best academic course I've ever taken anywhere and um well at that time I was extremely interested in Chinese American relations and on probably doing foreign service or some such thing um when I got to China um it was eye opening um I did not expect a level of um poverty at that time still I didn't um really understand the level of development that was going to be needed to bring China into um you know where I don't think anyone dreamed of where China would be today in 1981 in 1981 if you'll recall um there's a real question as to what the future of China is going to be um the um uh Gang of Four had just um you know fallen at the time it was very unclear the roles of um people like um uh Deng Xiaoping um and we all bang and uh Zhao Ziliang and actually at that time Zhao Ziliang was a new army you know in terms of the um top leadership but um we all bang was the um no no it was uh no who is the hua guo feng was the person who was um in competition I think in leadership at that point it was very unclear where that was going to go and um it wasn't until years later then that you know from there uh Deng Xiaoping uh succeeded in um you know beginning the uh four modernizations and changing China and of course that was dramatic in that it was the beginning of putting um China on the pace of development where it is now um but at the time in Beijing I remember I was um just very concerned about the nature of the planned economy there um I don't know Jay you probably remember better than I do but I remember in um Beijing I would go outside um I don't know if you remember where the old uh foreigners uh foreign students dorm was by that side door we're right next to the one of the side doors so we would just go out that side door and you know one week there would be a whole mound of chips on the street eggplants and it'd be a mountain of eggplants just thrown in the middle of an intersection and people would just grab them the next week it would be some other um you know uh produce cabbage cabbage ready and um let's see at that point we had renminbi that you know only the um Chinese people could uh use and then the foreigners had hui hui dren which was a foreign currency that we could use and if you use hui hui dren we could go to the Beijing fund in the peaking hotel we could then buy a bicycle so that we can ride our bike from you know uh where beta uh beta uh beta is into the city and into the that that was a considered a car in early 90s 90s 80s that was like like this yeah and jay you couldn't even buy a bicycle without either a ticket or you had the hui hui dren that you could buy at the um certain shop so at that time I decided this was going to be too much for me and um I um then was reminded I needed to do something for a living because we didn't come from a lot of money therefore I went to law school okay and why law school I mean why not medical school why not some why not architecture why law school I was I if for high school I was pretty good in math you know as well as like I guess other uh subjects but I tell you in college when people are good in math at Yale they were pretty good at math I was I can I can write I can scramble I can I got a really good essay very quickly but you know you can't make up certain answers to math equations no that's right oh yeah I had to do pretty well I mean were you trying hard to get into Yale I I can tell you I really didn't think of going to Yale and back then we didn't have concept of a tiger mom or you know developing you know this profile so that you could be a really good app and you know get your grades you know get your a's and you know get really high test scores extra clerical activities show your leadership abilities we didn't have that roadmap but I was just fortunate that just from the things I was doing it just set me up that way no I never intended to go to Yale I never even thought of going to Ivy League school my god that was for the rich excuse the term it's for the rich right and it was only after my brother who was two years older than me I remember we lived you know three boys in one room and I remember he must have done very well in those standardized tests or something like that because he got an application actually from Yale you know Yale middle to him he didn't have to ask for it he ended up just applying a Notre Dame and he got in and he went there and never applied to Yale and but I remember seeing oh my god I can't believe Yale that's that Ivy League institution is setting an application to my brother I'm thinking well hey if he yeah they're interested him maybe they're interested in me so I applied yeah yeah it was great how did you like Yale oh it's fantastic um as I said um I I would say you know um in many ways uh my experience of um a god that just that one summer they're very transformative but I can't say that Yale transform me as a person I think uh it really is and it's not just academics it's there's just a lot you you transform as a whole human being I think one of the magic things about Yale is that it focuses on undergraduate um experience and um you know you have a lot of um amazing institutions um you know in this country all over the world but the thing I loved about Yale was you actually had access to the big main professors and you could meet with them talk to them you know again I mentioned uh professor Spence uh earlier um just fantastic experience my college roommate I was an economics major his senior advisor I think he met him like every week probably the senior year or you know at least one semester every week uh James Tobin who won the Nobel uh prize in economics um and so that made it a very unique experience in class I mean you know you just so have amazingly uh talented classmates that you know you're your friends with them you know them not because you think they're going to do amazing things but you just you know hang out with them because they're you know friends and so yeah it was uh wonderful how was it racially racially um well I I don't have the numbers but I'll I always thought it was always about the same percentage of different cases of color you know in the years that I I was I don't remember what it was like um so I started in 78 and graduated in 82 I don't know maybe five end-percent Asians I I really think a lot yes but not nearly the numbers uh that you know of Asians I can't doubt because there's quite a few one thing about Yale judges that like like the federal judiciary Yale is uh my observation is a family a family that lasts uh really all your life oh yeah absolutely and uh the Yale connections uh do uh last lifetime I do want to say one thing that's uh you think about Yale my grandmother who is I was you know she was born in the Qing dynasty in uh 1898 I believe she was born um but she was one of the rare um women who actually knew how to uh read and write and her Chinese classical Chinese was amazing as was my mother's because their their grandparents you know had a actually started you know past the lower level tests in the Qing dynasty had a school actually a high school you know in Taishan in in Taishan City and um I remember when I mentioned that I was uh uh going to Yale she uh sat in in Chinese because she knew he had heard of Yale and knew was oh yeah wow yeah that she got off famous yeah right there's not a lot of universities that a person born in the Qing dynasty would have been oh yeah I know that university judge in 1890 was a year Baida was founded your grandma born in the same year as Peking University Baida was founded it's fascinating to hear about your family history and family some of your personal stories I remember you one of the interviews you mentioned that your mother once worked at a Hilton hotel and 44 years later you you sit on as of when you saw the first Asian American federal judge on the bench and it could you just tell us a little bit about your parents sure absolutely um I think obviously parents uh shaped a major part of who I am and the values that I hold um I would say my father uh really was the exemplar in uh as being a role model hard work um he um his family was very poor from southern that part southern China my dad was sent off to work on a plantation in the Philippines I can't believe you was 12 or 14 years old and when he was there he was just helping with some relatives who owned a plantation there apparently and he was just there helping cook rice and food and stuff you know as a 12 year old kid and he would send money back to China that's how poor that area of China was and um so when um after the liberation of China my father was um well actually after World War II my father uh was back in China time and then ultimately uh went to Hong Kong and um then married my mother who was still in China my father went out to Hong Kong my mother remained in China during the liberation and after the liberation my my mother came out to went out to Hong Kong and joined my dad my dad became a tailor so he made western suits and I still remember this day as we left Hong Kong on the way to Honolulu Hawaii where we first entered the US um back then it was 1966 so my father of course you know he was an excellent tailor we had these I see these pictures of us that we look like um sort of like these little people in Beatles outfits at those very narrow you know very narrow height fitting jackets narrow collars very narrow ties and so forth that remember the British invasion and their their clothing so I remember that and then but my father gave up a lot when he left Hong Kong I guess he had a very thriving tailoring business when he came here he became a cook in a kitchen and the reason we ended up Minneapolis is back then there was a big Chinese restaurant called the Nampin a lot of our local people older local people would know that restaurant it was one of the few Chinese restaurants here that was big enough that you could bring in you know extra cooks in the kitchen and so forth that's how we ended up in Minneapolis purely just to get a job but I tell you my dad worked very hard my mother was they had a home mom extremely bright you know grandmother extremely bright my father was extremely bright and but I remember my mother when she came to the U.S. you know she had to work outside the home to make ends meet you know she started sort of a typical almost like a stereo that she worked for a short time in a laundry mat or a laundry business and then after that she ended up being a cook and she was a cook in the back then it was a Hilton hotel on you know on Kellogg and you know right on the right by the bridge a Kellogg and Cedar that area and the kitchen she worked in was called Don the beach Comer sort of a Polynesian theme and and the Hilton and we lived in South Minneapolis near Lake Elendale she took a bus you know hours probably an hour and a half getting there an hour and a half coming back just to do that cooking job and I remember there was one incident it was frighteningly cold we're in middle of January you know in the coldest times of Minnesota you know there's one occasion where she and her friend were waiting for a bus you know there was one stop that they had one transfer they needed and there weren't the heated shelters or anything that the bus that was supposed to pick them up passed them by and so there wouldn't be another bus for half an hour and they were freezing cold and I mean they were lucky they made it back and you know that's what I remember is what they did and when they eventually saved enough money to open a restaurant their first five years they work I think they were only off a full day on Christmas Day and Thanksgiving two days off for five years a year well that's a you know the it's the story of an immigrant family a working immigrant family making the best of it and giving you the opportunity and I and I wonder you know what what effect what benefit what what influence does that you know your Chinese background your immigration experience your family and so forth what what effect does that have on you in terms of your entry into the legal marketplace your work for a private law firm your service on the on the Minnesota bench your service on the federal bench how does that affect the way you see things the way you do your legal practice your participation in the legal community you know the federal bar association and the like then how does it affect your way of looking at things in court I think the first thing it does is it makes me very optimistic about the prospects of America and we hear the phrase the promise of America used a lot but you know sometimes you wonder how you know much people really mean and what they mean by but that immigrant experience really is a validation that that is not just a happy phrase that's overused it is a true it's a reality that is available in America is that the concept of hard work and opportunity as long as those opportunities are fair and there are no barriers that are laid in people's way that's the promise of America that you can go for it and not everyone can make it you will have a fair shot at it and that's why I always think you got to think back don't don't kid ourselves that oh the promise of America means everything's a smooth road and everything's hunky dory fair and equal the realities there is a lot of inequality as well and you think of you know the importance of things like education and the right to travel think about it when we came here we first arrived in outside of in Aurora Illinois a town outside of Chicago about 45 40 miles west of it because we had the right to travel my dad could get get to Minneapolis and work there because you had the right to get what job you wanted and there was no bar to that he was able to get that job doesn't sound like a glorious job but hey we he paid it because of that ability to get that we when we got to Minneapolis we we didn't have money for private schools we didn't have two years believe me we didn't have tutors you know getting us all ready to apply for the highly competitive schools you know but you know that free education in Minneapolis you know put me in one of the top institutions in the world put my brother in another one of the top the institutions my other siblings all graduated from college and you know I have profession had professional careers so all of those things are very important we could buy a house where we wanted to so think about it equality of education travel work housing those are the fundamental build blocks of life and those are available in America but at the same time there are barriers one of my first experiences I remember I didn't speak English when I was in Aurora first year and I was on you know they put you in speech class back but in reality we were you know we were learning English you know as a kid at six years old you learn pick up languages very easily in all Canada and I did but at that time in Aurora I was still learning and I remember my uncle used to pick us up out of after elementary school I was in first grade and I remember this friend of mine walked me out to the door and then my uncle sitting in a station wagon waiting for me and then you know I hop in yeah you know hop in he takes off he closes the door and after we were on the road after we left the school he says oh don't talk to that boy anyone and I said oh why that's my friend and he was a white kid who you know when he walked me out you know I thought he was my friend you know I didn't know what is he seemed nice but my uncle said when they bow to you and go ching chong ching chong they are making fun of you they're not your friend and that's a reality of America too that we face those types of issues last question judge at least from me is this you know you date back a few years you entered school and the law and practice and the bench a long time already and I wonder what what whether that's the same as an immigrant would experience today or have things changed and what would your advice be as somebody who you know is you know following your track and also say a Chinese immigrant right now today how would it differ what would you advise and you know what are the prospects I I still believe that the promise of America is there I also believe that opportunities are there at the same time I believe that we are in a situation in this country where we need to impact the middle class and the middle class is feeling very challenged and as a result of that new immigrants if people are entering in the middle class or wherever they land or striving to be the middle class sort of that's where we were you know when we came over here but if in fact there is challenges to maintaining that middle class I think naturally there's going to be more competition in that sense and when you have competition people you feel threatened but one of the key things I think we have to do is keep on emphasizing the concept that you know it's almost like the trade concept that if you have people who are really good at doing one thing in another group you're really going we want to maximize each of their abilities because ultimately it's better for everybody and I think that the important thing is to just make sure everyone realizes that you know the folks who have been here a long time add a lot of to the system but the new folks that are arriving will add a lot to the new system so the idea is that we should assimilate in terms of the principles of democracy and the fundamentals of government by that I mean when people come to the US I think people have to assimilate and melt into and believe the concept of the constitution the three parts of government the rule of law that is where people have to buy in I think that's very important but where it really helps to have a blending as opposed to acquisition over people where you have a blending of different cultures and taking the different aspects of each culture the best parts of those cultures putting it together that's where you get the synergy that results in one plus one is more than two yes sir absolutely we're out of time chan can you can you summarize the essence of what we should take away from this conversation and can you thank the judge I will thank the judge first we are very lucky to have you judge we're very lucky to have you in minnesota you know I'm from Beijing the northern part of China and I always admire people from the topical region settled and not being minnesota and please stay here I just want to say that you know judge you have appreciate your share your personal story and many good advice to our audience and young young people that you do mention the promise of America and you in one of the previous lectures you mentioned the limit of promise America and I truly appreciate your optimism you know overall optimism about the future of America because I like one of the quote I really strike me and remind me many of your teachings and your comments is nothing wrong about America cannot be corrected by what's wrong what's right about America so again thank you so much judge and thank you j aloha to host this show thank you judge Leon thank you chain one a nation of immigrants thank you so much aloha