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March 3, 2011
Contact: Otto Koester, associate director, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center, 406-243-2050, otto.koester@umontana.edu.
MANSFIELD CENTER LEGAL EXPERT NAMED FULBRIGHT SPECIALIST
MISSOULA –
James Park Taylor, an international legal expert from Montana, has received a prestigious grant award from the Council of International Exchange of Scholars and the U.S. Department of State under the Fulbright Specialist Program.
In his first specialist assignment, the Hungarian-American Commission for Educational Exchange has invited Taylor to spend three weeks this month as a visiting scholar in the Faculty of Law at the University of Pecs, Hungary’s oldest university.
At the university, he will deliver lectures to undergraduate students on terrorism and counterterrorism, legal protections for minorities and comparative constitutional law. He also will present lectures to doctoral students on contemporary legal issues in China.
In addition, Taylor will discuss issues of American public law and curriculum development with faculty colleagues. His visit will build on a strong working relationship that has developed over the past three years under a Memorandum of Understanding between the University of Pecs and The University of Montana.
Taylor also will be eligible to accept additional short-term assignments at other international sites over the next five years as a Fulbright Specialist.
Named director of the International Legal Reform Initiative at UM’s Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center in 2007, Taylor has been involved in a variety of legal trainings throughout Asia.
In 2008 he headed the center’s partnership project with the nongovernmental International Bridges to Justice to train Legal Aid lawyers from provinces throughout India in modern advocacy skills, the first nationwide interactive training for India’s Legal Aid lawyers. During 2008-10, Taylor also oversaw a clinical legal education project for law professors in 16 universities, served for a time as IBJ’s interim director for all China programs and conducted trainings for lawyers, prosecutors, judges and police officers throughout the region.
In 2009 Taylor participated in the first clinical law training for law and Shari’a faculty from Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad and Kabul, Afghanistan. Last year he conducted a clinical education workshop in Tbilisi, Georgia, and in January this year he assisted with training for lawyers in the Ministry of Agriculture of the Afghan government.
Before joining the Mansfield Center, Taylor practiced law in Montana and served as president of the Montana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and chairman of the state’s Public Defender Commission.
The Fulbright Specialist Program is an important element of the U.S. government’s bilateral relationships with countries around the world. Its purpose is to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries, and to offer American scholars and other professionals the opportunity to teach, develop curriculum, exchange ideas and find solutions to shared international concerns.
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