By:
Chuck Woods (352) 392-0400Source(s):
Jim Chen chenx064@umn.edu, (612) 625-4839
Michael Olexa olexa@ufl.edu, (352) 392-1881 ext. 327
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Jim Chen, a professor and associate dean in the University of Minnesota’s Law School, will be the 2006 Wershow Distinguished Lecturer April 6 at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law.
His presentation – “There’s No Such Thing as Biopiracy…And It’s a Good Thing, Too” – will be at 4 p.m. in the Ceremonial Classroom (Room 180A). The lecture is free and open to the public.
Established in 1985 by James and Dorothy Wershow, the lecture series is sponsored by the Agricultural Law Center in UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences in collaboration with the Wershow family.
Michael Olexa, a professor in the IFAS food and resource economics department and director of the Agricultural Law Center, said Chen was selected to speak because of his expertise in agricultural law and other areas.
A member of the University of Minnesota Law School faculty since 1993, Chen teaches and writes in the areas of administrative law, agricultural law, constitutional law, economic regulation, environmental law, industrial policy, legislation and natural resources law.
He has also taught courses in criminal law and food and drug law. In 1998, Chen was designated a Vance K. Opperman Research Scholar. He was appointed the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law in 2000 and the James L. Krusemark Professor of Law in 2001. He has served as associate dean for faculty since 2004.
Chen is heavily involved with the law school’s journals. He is an editor of Constitutional Commentary and the faculty editor-in-chief of the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology. He also serves as faculty advisor to the Minnesota Law Review and Law & Inequality. Chen is director of special projects for the university’s consortium and joint degree program in law and the life sciences, and a member of the graduate faculty in the university’s Conservation Biology Program.
Chen received his bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, and his master’s degree from Emory University. After studying as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Iceland, he earned his doctor of law degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he served as an executive editor of the Harvard Law Review. He clerked for Judge J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and for Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Chen’s lectures have spanned 12 countries, four continents and three languages. In 1995, he held a chaire départementale in the Faculté de Droit et des Sciences Politiques of the Université de Nantes. In 1999, he became the first American to teach law as a visiting professor at Heinrich-Heine Universität in Düsseldorf. He taught in 2000 at Slovenská Pol’nohospodárska Univerzita v Nitre (the Slovak Agricultural University in Nitra).
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