Watch the event recording

Presentation by Frank K. Upham, Wilf Family Professor of Property Law, NYU School of Law, followed by a conversation with Suzanne A. Kim, Professor of Law and Judge Denny Chin Scholar at Rutgers Law School; moderated by Center for Japanese Legal Studies executive director Nobuhisa Ishizuka.

Professor Upham, widely recognized for his leading scholarship on Japanese law and its social and political role in contemporary Japan, will discuss his current research at the intersection of law and social justice in Japan, focusing specifically on the country’s legal approach and judicial responses to marriage equality, gay rights and the individual’s relationship to society. In doing so he will draw on his current comparative study of the interaction of legal doctrine, social and economic structure, and culture in gender discrimination in France, Japan and the United States.

About the Speakers

Frank Upham is the Wilf Family Professor of Property Law at New York University School of Law where he teaches the basic property course, as well as courses on advanced property topics, law and development, and comparative law and society with an emphasis on East Asia and the developing world. His scholarship focuses on Japan and China, and his book Law and Social Change in Postwar Japan received the Thomas J. Wilson Prize from Harvard University Press. Recent scholarship includes “Japanese Same Sex Marriage: Prospects for Change,” “Resistible Force Meets Malleable Object: The Story of the ‘Introduction’ of Norms of Gender Equality into Japanese Employment Practice”, and “The Great Property Fallacy: Theory, Reality, and Growth in Developing Countries” (2018). He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School. In addition to having taught at NYU School of Law since 1994, he has taught at Ohio State, Harvard, Boston College, and UCLA law schools in the United States, and Tsinghua University in China, Tunghai University in Taiwan, and Kobe University in Japan
 

Suzanne A. Kim is Professor of Law and Judge Denny Chin Scholar at Rutgers Law School and the co-author of "Family Law in a Changing America" (2020). Her research and teaching focus on family, procedure, constitutional law, antidiscrimination, critical theory, and socio-legal studies. Her interdisciplinary scholarship examines relationships between law, critical theory, and social sciences in relation to the regulation of intimacies, gender, family, and discrimination.
Professor Kim serves on the Board of Directors of the Asian American Bar Association of New York and on the Board of Advisors of the organization Unchained at Last. Professor Kim earned a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.