Norman Ho

Peking University School of Transnational Law

Peking University School of Transnational Law (STL), on PKU's Shenzhen Graduate Campus, is the only law school in the world that combines an American-style Juris Doctor degree (J.D.) with a China law Juris Master degree (J.M.). STL provides an academically rigorous, bilingual four-year program of legal education that prepares students for the mixture of Common Law, civil law, and Chinese legal traditions increasingly characteristic of the global economy. China's State Council authorized the creation of China's first Common Law Juris Doctor curriculum in 2007. The following year, Peking University's School of Transnational Law admitted its first students. The University appointed Jeffrey Lehman, a former president of Cornell University and dean of the University of Michigan Law School, as STL's Founding Dean. STL's current dean, Philip McConnaughay, was Founding Dean of Penn State University's Schools of Law and International Affairs, a former professor of law at the University of Illinois, and a former partner of the leading international law firm, Morrison & Foerster. STL's fundamental mission is to (i) educate top university graduates about different legal traditions and systems and thereby promote their ability to contend with the new policies and practices likely to emerge in a globalized economy; (ii) contribute to the creation of a Chinese legal profession equipped to serve China's increasingly sophisticated domestic economy and to compete successfully on an international scale with dominant American and British law firms; and (iii) provide domestically in an affordable way the graduate-level legal education top Chinese students traditionally have only been able to obtain abroad at great expense. As of 2015, STL also offers an LL.M. degree that offers international students with a first degree in law full access to STL's J.D. and J.M. curriculums. STL is known as "China's Most Innovative Law School in China's Innovative City."​