California Western School of Law

Schwartz, David P.

English

BFP v. Resolution Trust Corporation: Critiquing the Supreme Court\u27s Method of Determining  Reasonably Equivalent Value  Within the Context of Bankruptcy Foreclosures

Manz, William H.

Cardozo\u27s Use of Authority: An Empirical Study

Gee, Erin M.

The Application of the Doctrine of Successorship to the Privatization of Government Services

Miller, Nan D.

International Protection of the Rights of Prisoners: Is Solitary Confinement in the United States a Violation of International Standards?

Szasz, Paul C.

Protecting Human and Minority Rights in Bosnia: A Documentary Survey of International Proposals

Attix, Cheri L.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Are Taiwan\u27s Trading Partners Implying Recognition of Taiwanese Statehood?

McCall, Kathryn L.

What is Asia Afraid Of? The Diversionary Effect of NAFTA\u27s Rules of Origin on Trade Between the United States and Asia

Ireland, Marilyn J.

IN TRIBUTE
This issue of the California Western International Law Journal is
respectfully dedicated to Chin Kim, Professor of International, Comparative
and Asian Law, who retired from our faculty in July 1995.
The Laws of Nations; the Ways of a Man:
Understanding and Chin Kim
Marilyn J. Ireland*
Professor Emeritus Chin Kim is a scholar of the first rank. But to focus
upon this scholarly work in isolation ignores the coherent beauty of the kind
and vibrant human being who both produced a library of his own work and
directed the law library at California Western School of Law. Only someone
of Professor Kim's intellect and dedication could have mastered so many
different fields of law, in so many languages, and respecting so many legal
cultures. His many books and articles are a prodigious legacy that substan-
tially contributes to understanding among legal scholars in Asia, Europe, and
the Americas. But the unique gift of this scholarship does not stand in
isolation from the man. It is an integral part of his character and soul. His
scholarship gives the same gift as all his endeavors; the gift of understanding.
The theme of understanding defines Chin Kim's work not only as a
scholar but also as a librarian. A library is, or should be, a repository of the
kind of information that leads to the understanding from which wisdom can
be attained. Chin Kim created a library at California Western Law School that
is such a place. It is not a collection of books and computer terminals. It is
not staff or shelving. It is a coherent system that is far more than its
excellent and well chosen parts.
One of Chin's true geniuses is his ability to devise and manage systems.
A personal story will perhaps illustrate how well Chin's library functioned
even in the early days when the library budget was particularly small. I was
in need of a copy of a German fairy tale which, for obvious reasons, was not
in the law school collection. (Honestly, there was a legitimate scholarly
purpose behind my search.) My citation was to a sixteen-volume German
encyclopedia of folk tales. Without question and as smoothly as if I had
asked for something totally routine, the appropriate volume appeared on my
desk within three days, along with the name and phone number of a potential
translator. (Ich spreche nur ain bio3chen Deutch.) As I later learned, there
were only two copies of that encyclopedia in the United States. At most
major universities my search would have been a difficult one. At California
* Professor of Law, California Western School of Law. Graduate, University of Chicago
Law School. Formerly Associate Dean at Washington University School of Law, and Lecturer
in Women's Studies at San Diego State University.
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Ireland: IN TRIBUTE: to Chin Kim, Professor of International, Comparative
Published by CWSL Scholarly Commons, 1995
Western School of Law, Chin designed a library in which the researcher
glides to his or her destination.
Chin managed other systemsjust as well; systems of shared understand-
ing among United States and Mexican judges; systems of professionalism
and competence among judges in South Korea. Under his management, the
Master of Comparative Law program at CWSL seemed to run automatically.
I have just enough experience with MCL programs to know that they
inherently run as smoothly and are as easily handled as a cholla cactus, and
are only slightly more prickly. Problems abound with protocol among
foreign dignitaries. Evaluation of applicants with foreign educational
credentials as to their professional and language competence is only slightly
easier than judging their motivation. There are also the mundane problems
of insuring payment of tuition, of seeing to the safety of foreign students in
a strange urban culture, and of doing business with the Immigration and
Naturalization Service.
Chin's MCL students always succeeded and most often excelled. They
were well recruited and meticulously selected. I often wondered why Chin
persisted in the time consuming and financially unrewarding task of almost
singlehandedly administering the law school's MCL program. Then I
understood. It was just another way for him to spread multi-cultural
understanding; something for him to do when not otherwise occupied as a
scholar doing exactly the same thing.
Would California Western's faculty be as diverse as it is today without
the years of leadership of Chin Kim? He raised his voice for women, for
African Americans, and finally, for another Asian on a faculty which, when
he joined it, was dominated by one ethnic, gender, and racial group. One can
only guess the many contexts in which Chin, over the years, found himself
to be "other." He has done very well in the role because he has the ability to
empathize beyond his particular experience of race, gender, and ethnicity to
see the relevance of every person and every culture's experience. I do regret
that I never sat in on Professor Kim's Comparative Law class. That I also
missed the chance to audit his Jurisprudence class is a criminal oversight, but
other parts of my life intruded on my time. Some things, if you put them off
until tomorrow, are lost forever. Still, in a small way I was a student of
Professor Kim, for I had the good sense sometimes to listen to him. In the
process, I enjoyed observing his mind at work.
Some scholars are hawks; they see their prey and swoop down like the
swift bolt from a crossbow, striking their target with a quick and penetrating
wit. Others are moles, digging deeper and deeper for the root source of their
inquiry.
Chin encircles his conceptual prey from a great distance. When he is sure
that there are no outliers, he circles like a wolf pack, capturing the totality of
a concept as well as its central core. We live in a swift era which values the
drama of the hawk. We live in a conflicted era, which enjoys debating the
dirty and simple answers of the mole. Often we would rather not understand,
at least not totally.
Chin Kim is honorable in his pursuit of wisdom; he truly does want to
understand totally. He is honorable as a teacher and scholar; he truly wants
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to help us follow our own road to understanding. He is wise enough to have
searched for understanding wherever he could find it, and persistent enough
to have made that search the difficult and exhausting work of a lifetime.
We, Chin's colleagues, celebrate his decision to retire from California
Western School of Law with mixed emotions. His routine and daily absence
from our lives is a loss that is only partly tempered by our pleasure that he
will now have more time, well earned and deserved indeed, to devote to his
personal interests.
Tribute to Professor Chin Kim
Frankie Fook-lun Leung*
Professor Chin Kim is a scholar and a gentleman in the fullest sense of
both designations. As a scholar, he possesses the extremely rare ability to
read and research in Chinese, Korean and Japanese materials. His writings
on Asian law place him on a first order of serious scholarship.
When he lectured at the University of Hong Kong, School of Law, I
received an excellent report about him from my former colleagues at that
institution. When he was running the Master's Degree in Comparative Law
program at California Western School of Law, he showed genuine concern
to his students, most of whom came from civil law countries. He contacted
me on many occasions, seeking placement for these foreign graduates in order
to acquaint them with American private legal practice. I was honored to have
been able to refer them to the appropriate Los Angeles law firms, including
our own, where interns were suitably accommodated.
I have been impressed by Professor Kim's prolific writings, on subjects
ranging from the death penalty in traditional China to service of process
under the Hague Convention. Professor Kim provides an invaluable bridge
between American legal culture and those of diverse civil law countries.
Asian law presents a mysterious facade to many American juris doctorate
candidates. Having taught that subject myself, at both Loyola Law School
in Los Angeles, and Stanford University, I have found Professor Kim's
articles an indispensable source of reading materials for my law students.
Professor Kim will always be remembered as a doyen on Asian,
comparative and international law. His intellectual influences will continue
to be felt on more than one continent, to be sure. I can confidently predict
that his retirement from California Western School of Law will only open
another chapter in his continuing efforts in international and comparative legal
scholarship.
* Partner, Lewis, D'Amato, Brisbois & Bisgaard. Formerly an adjunct lecturer at the
University of Hong Kong School of Law. Currently an adjunct professor of law at the Loyola
Law School and a lecturer at the Stanford University School of Law.
3
Ireland: IN TRIBUTE: to Chin Kim, Professor of International, Comparative
Published by CWSL Scholarly Commons, 1995
Professor Chin Kim: A Reminiscence
Craig M. Lawson'
I first met Chin Kim in the summer of 1977, when I began a graduate
teaching fellowship in the law school at the University of Illinois, Chin's
prior posting, where he was an Associate Law Librarian. Chin was
introduced to me early that summer as a person I should know. I had
expressed an interest in Comparative Law (which I was later to teach), and
Chin was Illinois' resident Asian Law scholar and teacher. Someone ushered
me into Chin's office, where he climbed out from behind a pile of papers to
greet me with a warmth I have still not forgotten. I no longer remember my
guide on that early tour of the law school, but I remember Chin's smiling
face as if our introduction were yesterday. His manner today is still that
warm; whenever we speak by telephone I vividly see his characteristic smile.
Toward the end of that summer eighteen years ago in Illinois, I enrolled in
the Asian Law seminar which he taught there every year.
I remember Chin for many things from that important year. I remember
meetings in his office. The work-in-progress of many projects always seemed
to surround him. At any given time, three or four of these projects were
usually laid out on his desk and on the shelves by his side. Chin would
often draw me into conversation about one of them, leaving me to wonder
now what I conceivably had to contribute, given his expertise and my relative
ignorance. Like the great teacher he was, he always left me feeling that those
conversations meant as much to him as they did to me, though I realize today
how much more significant the flow must have been from him to me, and
how much less I must have returned.
I remember how much I learned in that seminar, which for me was a
Western-educated lawyer's first exposure to the vast differences between
Eastern and Western legal thought. In Chin's seminar those differences
appeared to be vast, yet manageable. We began with a careful attempt to be
faithful to the spirit of Eastern legal system, and hence began with what was
genuinely characteristic of Asian legal thought, and therefore genuinely
different from law in the West. We finished with the confident knowledge
that a Western lawyer could nonetheless understand Asian law, different as
it might be. If this was sometimes a struggle, it was a worthy one. In this
struggle Chin was a supportive teacher, and a fine one. At the end of that
seminar, Chin offered to work further with me on my paper to turn it into
something publishable. I accepted his offer, and that paper became my first
professional academic publication.'
And finally I remember from the first year in our long friendship one
occasion when Chin invited my wife and me, with one or two other
* Professor of Law, University of Nebraska College of Law. A.B., 1970, Yale University;
J.D., 1974, University of California Hastings College of the Law; admitted to the California Bar,
1974.
1. Kim & Lawson, The Law of the Subtle Mind: The Traditional Japanese Conception of
Law, 28 INT'L & COMP. L.Q. 491 (1979).
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colleagues, to his home, where he and his wife, Bok Lim, graciously made
us welcome. Not realizing I was visiting a genuinely Eastern home or at least
not realizing what that implied, I wore a favorite pair of socks; my finances
were those of the typical graduate student, and those socks had holes in them.
We arrived, only to be invited to remove our shoes in the entry hall. Seeing
the hole in my socks, and sensing how this might embarrass me, Chin
immediately, and with the utmost tact, offered me a pair of his own. Many
students have metaphorically attempted to fill their professor's shoes, but how
many of them have literally wom their socks? I can say that I have.
There are many former students, now professors and lawyers themselves,
who have similar memories, whose lives and careers Chin Kim positively
touched. I know they think of him as fondly as I do.
5
Ireland: IN TRIBUTE: to Chin Kim, Professor of International, Comparative
Published by CWSL Scholarly Commons, 1995


IN TRIBUTE: to Chin Kim, Professor of International, Comparative and Asian Law

Kaye, Stuart B.

Legal Approaches to Polar Fisheries Regimes: A Comparative Analysis of the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources and the Bering Sea Doughnut Hole Convention

Lord, Janet E.

Legal Restraints in the Use of Landmines: Humanitarian and Environmental Crisis