China Program Faculty

Susan W. Tiefenbrun is a Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Global Legal Studies at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. As program director, Professor Tiefenbrun will be on site throughout the China Program, and available to advise and assist students with any problems that may arise. Professor Tiefenbrun received her J.D. from New York University, her Ph.D. with distinction from Columbia University, her M.A. from the University of Wisconsin, summa cum laude, and her B.S. from Wisconsin University where she was Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. Her special interests are international law, corporate law, securities law, international intellectual property, and women and international human rights law. She speaks ten foreign languages and is able to speak, read, write, and understand Chinese. After attending law school, she worked in an international law firm in Paris and in the New York office of Coudert Brothers, where she handled international commercial transactions. She participated in the opening of one of the first American law offices in Moscow and is a specialist in eastern European joint venture laws, as well as the laws of the European Union, China and the former Soviet Union. She has written a book-length study of Chinese, Russian, and eastern European joint venture laws, and numerous articles on international intellectual property especially in China, the World Court, international human rights laws, and human trafficking. She has edited three books on law and the arts, war crimes, and legal ethics. She is currently the Vice President of the Law & Humanities Institute and President of the West coast branch of this institute. She is past coordinator of several bar association committees on Soviet law and the Soviet-American Banking Law Committee. Professor Tiefenbrun was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 2003 by the President of France. She lectures in English, French and Russian on private international law transactions and international trade. She is a consultant to several companies on European Union laws and joint ventures.

Arnold S. Rosenberg is a member of the faculty at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego.  Professor Rosenberg received his J.D. in 1976 from Harvard Law School, where he won the West Publishing Company Hornbook Award for Outstanding Scholastic Achievement.  Before coming to Thomas Jefferson in 2002, Prof. Rosenberg practiced law for 25 years, during which he was a partner in the law firm of Bancroft, Avery & McAlister in San Francisco for 12 years and spent four years as General Counsel of a commercial bank.  Prof. Rosenberg has served as Co-Chair of the State Bar of California Business Law Section's Uniform Commercial Code Committee and currently is serving as a member of the Steering Group of the American Bar Association Business Law Section's International Commercial Transactions, Franchising and Distribution Committee and the State Bar of California Business Law Section's Consumer Financial Services Committee.  Prof. Rosenberg is author of a number of law review articles including Where to File Against Non-U.S. Debtors: Applying UCC §9-307(c) [Rev] to Foreign Filing, Recording and Registration Systems, 39 U.C.C. L.J. 109 (2006) and Better Than Cash? Global Proliferation of Payment Cards and Consumer Protection Policy, 44 Colum. J. Transnat'l L. 520 (2006), and is a contributor to The Law of Electronic Fund Transfers (LexisNexis, 2007).

Claire Wright is an Assistant Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. She earned her J.D. at Harvard Law School, cum laude, her B.A. at Smith College, summa cum laude, and took the General Course at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Prior to joining the faculty of Thomas Jefferson in 2003, Professor Wright was a partner at the international law firm of Baker & McKenzie and a partner at the accounting and consulting firm of Ernst & Young LLP. In addition, at Ernst & Young LLP, she was the Director of the World Trade Organization Center for the firm. At both Baker & McKenzie and Ernst & Young LLP, she represented a wide variety of clients around the world on World Trade Organization (WTO) issues. She continues to be a key member of an American Law Institute committee that reviews the cases decided each year by the WTO Appellate Body. As part of her practice, she visited China on a number of occasions in order to assist her clients and meet with government officials on WTO matters. She has spoken and written widely regarding China 's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the status of China 's compliance with its WTO obligations. Each spring at Thomas Jefferson, she teaches a class on WTO Law, in which the students present hypothetical WTO cases to the class. Many of these cases have involved China. Previously, she taught this course at Stanford Law School. In addition, she has taught a survey course covering the different WTO Agreements, using China as a case study, at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego. This past summer, she participated in a similar three-week program at the Korean Legal Studies Center at Columbia Law School.

Benjamin Templin is an Associate Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. Prior to joining the faculty of Thomas Jefferson, Professor Templin was a corporate attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. His practice focused on general corporate law for early stage technology companies. He also represented venture capital funds as investor's counsel. Professor Templin holds a J.D. from the University of California, Boalt Hall School of Law, where he was a member of the Berkeley Technology & Law Journal and served on the policy committee for admissions requirements. After graduation, Professor Templin taught Legal Methods to undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley. His web site
(www.LawNerds.com ) provides instruction in exam writing techniques to first-year law students. Before going to law school, Professor Templin was a director of online services at Ziff-Davis Publishing Company and editor-in-chief of MacGuide, a Macintosh computing magazine.