Professor Paul Roberts participates in high-level Evidence Law reform conference at Northwestern Law School, Chicago, USA

Professor Paul Roberts was an invited speaker at a conference on The Foundations of the Law of Evidence and their Implications for Developing Countries, organised by Professor Ronald J Allen and hosted by Northwestern Law School, Chicago, 21-22 November 2014. Professor Allen is John Henry Wigmore Professor of Law at Northwestern University.

The conference brought together prominent Evidence scholars from the US and overseas, with a particular focus on current law reform initiatives in China and Tanzania. The Tanzanian delegation was led by Chief Justice Othman, the Chief Justice of Tanzania, and Mr Aloysius Mujulizi, a full-time member of the Law Reform Commission of Tanzania. The Chinese group included a senior member of the People’s Supreme Court of the PRC and Zhang Boasheng, Vice-President of China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL) and founding Dean of CUPL’s Institute of Evidence Law and Forensic Science (IELFS).

Professor Roberts’ presentation, entitled ‘Exporting Common Law Evidence: An English Perspective’, contributed to lively and intellectually stimulating discussion about the merits of the US Federal Rules of Evidence as a model for procedural law reform in other jurisdictions. Further opportunities for productive collaboration in comparative law reform projects, in both China and Tanzania, are eagerly anticipated.