Return to Faculty list

Conner, Alison W. 康雅信

CCS Faculty
Professor, School of Law

Law 235: 956-6552
Department: 956-7966
Fax: 956-5569

BA 1967, University of Florida
MA 1970, Cornell University
JD 1973, Harvard Law School
PhD 1979, Cornell University

Professor Conner joined the Law School in 1995 after nearly twelve years of teaching and research in Chinese Asia. She served as a senior Fulbright professor at Nanjing University (1983-84), then taught at the Law Faculty of the National University of Singapore (1984-86). In 1986 she joined the University of Hong Kong's Faculty of Law, where she taught Chinese and Hong Kong law until she moved to the University of Hawai'i. She has conducted research in Taiwan and Shanghai with grants from the Inter-University Program and the Committee on Scholarly Communication with China, and has also been awarded Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation and Woodrow Wilson Center grants. In 2004 she returned to China on her second Fulbright award to teach comparative law as a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Law at Beijing's Tsinghua University. Professor Conner serves as Director of International Programs and chairman of Pacific-Asian Legal Studies at the Law School. She writes on modern Chinese law and legal history but maintains her broader interests in Chinese history, art and cinema.

China-Related Courses

  • Law 586 Law and Society in China
  • Law 578 Chinese Business Law
  • Law 587 Asian Comparative Law

Publications

  • “History of Chinese Law: The Republic 1911-49,” “Confessions,” “Confession and Acceptance of Sentence in Chinese Law,” and  “Lawyers in Chinese Law,” in Stanley N. Katz. ed. in chief, Encyclopedia of Legal History (forthcoming, Oxford University Press 2009).
  • “Anglo-American Law at Soochow,” in Daniel Bay and Ellen Widmer, eds., China’s Christian Colleges: Cross Cultural Connections,1900-50 (forthcoming Stanford University Press 2008).
  • “Chinese Lawyers on the Silver Screen,” in Mark Sidel and Corey Creekmur, Cinema, Law, and the State in Asia (Palgrave 2007).
  • “Soochow in the South,” Soochow Law Journal (2005).
  • “The Comparative Law School of China,” in C. Stephen Hsu, ed., Understanding China=s Legal System (New York University Press, 2003).  A Chinese translation of this article appears in 15 Zhongwai Faxue [Peking University Law Journal] 680 (Dec. 2003) ; and in Gao Hongjun, He Weifang and Karen Turner, eds.,  Meiguo Xuezhe Lun Zhongguo Falu Chuantong [Recent American Academic Writings on Traditional Chinese Law] (Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, rev. ed. 2003) 579-655.
  • “How I Got the Story (and Why It Took So Long): Legal Research in China” 2 Washington University Global Studies Law Review 193 (2003).
  • “Chinese Confessions and the Use of Torture,” in Bernard Durand, ed., La Torture Judiciare: Approches historiques et juridiques (Centre d=Histoire Judiciare, Universite Montpelier, 2002) 63.
  • “True Confessions? Chinese Confessions Then and Now,” in Karen Turner, Kent Guy and James V. Feinerman, eds., The Limits of the Rule of Law in China (University of Washington Press, 2000) 132.