April 26, 2007

Allen named Yangtze River Scholar

For effect on legal reform, law professor receives China’s highest academic honor

Ronald J. Allen, the John Henry Wigmore Professor of Law, has been designated a Yangtze River Scholar by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China.

The Yangtze River Scholar award is the highest academic honor given by the People’s Republic of China.

Only three other Americans have previously been designated Yangtze River Scholars, each of whom is a Nobel Laureate in Economics. Allen is the fourth American to receive this award and the first law professor, domestic or foreign, to be so honored.

The office of Vice-President Zhang Baosheng of China University of Political Science and Law said that Professor Allen is “one of the world’s most distinguished scholars in the fields of evidence and procedure,” adding that his research has been critically important to the efforts to reform the legal system of the People’s Republic of China.

Allen will encourage the collaborative efforts between him and Northwestern and China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing, which have proven invaluable to the modernization effort of the People’s Republic. Allen received the award April 19 at the university and provided a series of lectures on the American law of evidence.

Allen is the inaugural Fellow of the Procedural Law Research Center and is the Chair of the Foreign Board of Advisors of the Evidence Law and Forensic Sciences Institute of China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing. For many years, he has hosted and supervised the study and research of Chinese law faculty and students at Northwestern University, and he is advising the Evidence Law and Forensic Sciences Institute’s project to write a universal evidence code for the People’s Republic.

The Program was founded in 1999 in order to assist the progress of the Chinese people by helping to ensure that the country’s most distinguished and valuable scientists, scholars and researchers will remain in China and to secure the assistance of distinguished scholars and scientists worldwide.

Allen did his undergraduate work in mathematics at Marshall University and studied law at the University of Michigan. He is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of evidence, procedure, and constitutional law.

The three other Americans who have received this prestigious award are Colombia University professor in economics Robert A. Mundell, in Renmin University of China; Stanford University professor in economics Joseph E.Stiglitz, in Beijing University; and University of Chicago professor in economics, Gary S. Becker in Beijing University.