The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa welcomed a delegation of 30 distinguished lawyers, executive leaders and their spouses from the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA) on July 22.
Professor Mark Levin, director of the UH Mānoa Center for Japanese Studies and director of the William S. Richardson School of Law‘s Pacific-Asia Legal Studies Program, led the tour of the campus with discussions that focused on the UH law school’s international programs.
“We are fortunate to have had a longstanding relationship with JFBA that has helped to provide opportunities for collaboration and learning on both sides,” Levin said. “Our programs that bridge borders help prepare our students for a rapidly changing world where international knowledge is critical.”
The group included former JFBA President Attorney Motoji Kobayashi, and many recent vice presidents from 2022–2024, including all six of the women in the class of 2022–23, which was the largest group of women leaders in the organization’s history.
UH law school’s Master of Laws and Advanced Juris Doctor programs for foreign-trained lawyers, along with the Visiting Scholars program, have many graduates and current students from Japan. They come to Hawaiʻi to study law in the U.S. at a school that values Japanese legal studies and is located close to Japan.
Since 2002, the UH law school has welcomed a number of JFBA working delegations, with sessions looking at the structure of legal education in the U.S., the U.S. jury system, Hawaiʻi’s trust law systems and other topics. However, this was the largest JFBA group to visit the campus—bringing attention to the UH law school’s engagement with Japanese law and society in faculty research, student scholarship and pedagogy.
