Temple University School of Law has been a forerunner in internationalizing U.S. legal education. Long before other law schools started creating international programs and curriculum, Temple faculty and students were establishing programs around the globe and inviting students from each continent to be a part of the law school community. Today, Temple's commitment to international and comparative law, reflected in the diversity of its permanent faculty and visiting professors who specialize in these fields, in its extensive and innovative study abroad programs, and in its groundbreaking degree and certificate programs at our international campuses, is rivaled by very few other institutions.
About Chinese Health Law Activities at Temple Beasley School of Law:
The public health law team at Temple University School of Law has been supporting the development of health law in China for several years. In 2003, before the SARS outbreak, Professor Scott Burris spent several months in China teaching and investigating the state of health law as a field. He and his students at Temple's Tsinghua program conducted a survey of health law research and teaching in Chinese law schools that showed little activity and less interest. After SARS, the situation changed and Burris was able to organize a training and capacity-building program for a dozen Chinese law professors and government officials in Philadelphia in 2004. This book is just one outcome of these activities.
These scholars have since collaborated with Burris to on a number of other projects, including the organization of the Human Rights and HIV/AIDS Legal Training in Beijing, Health Law and Ethics Workshop for the Anti-AIDS Campaign in Beijing, Tsinghua Law School Symposium on Health Law, Yunnan Conference and Health Law Literature Development Meeting, and participation in the Shanghai NGO Conference on HIV/AIDS Law and Policy and the Shanghai AIDS Conference.
In July of 2005, Professor Burris directed a partnership with the Network Public Health Program at Open Society Institute to convene a two-day summit on the State of Health Law, Policy, and Research in China (www.chinahealthlaw.org). This event created an opportunity for leading experts from U.S. and China to engage in an interdisciplinary discussion of the implications of China's rapidly-changing legal and regulatory environment on medical care, bioethics, mechanisms of control of epidemics such as SARS and HIV/AIDS, biomedical research, mental health, and a number of other health and welfare-related issues. This event laid the groundwork for a number of planned activities to promote the building of the health law field in China, including a second round of health law training in China, a health law journal in Chinese, and the National Health Law Conference to be organized in China.
