Legal Delegation to Vietnam and Cambodia

January 8-21, 2004

Delegation Leader: Robert Hirshon

January 12, 2004 – Hanoi Law University – Dayna Jahnke Corwin

The meeting during the morning of January 12, 2004, with three individuals Tran Tien Dung (department of international law - international cooperation), Hoa Hue Long (department of international law - international cooperation) and Le Van Hop (international cooperation department - Hanoi Law University), is perhaps best expressed not contemporaneously, but in terms of hindsight, perhaps not even literally, but somewhat philosophically.

It was a morning that at first impression meant two groups talking around and across each other - American lawyers, hungry for information, asking questions to evasive, politically-correct members of what came to be known as, “the party.” Our guests showed signs of frustration by translation that escaped all - speaker, translator and listener. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that the whole process of talking over each other, getting shreds of meaningful information within carefully rehearsed facts, starts to take shape.

While acknowledging in 1979 the legal system was underdeveloped, the speakers were quick to emphasize that they now have good cooperation with a number of universities, including Harvard and the law department of San Francisco University, and now have some of the best professors and teachers in Vietnam - Hanoi being the intellectual center. We learned that since opening their doors in 1991, they have found a great need to restudy the law in order to have unity among the lawyers, since many have been educated in the former Soviet Union or French system. The Vietnamese system, based on civil law, has a relatively short history and has left them with many holes to fill in order to integrate commercially into the international community. While acknowledging that they are working on an improvement of training and the need for such improvement, they emphasized that they have had many achievements.

A goal for Vietnam is to be a member of the World Trade Organization by 2005. According to these individuals, the Vietnamese parliament has approved a new law policy program by 2007. They seem proud of the open-sky agreement (a direct 17-hour flight) that is the result of five years of negotiations. They see this as a “chance to improve commercial relations and know more about the culture and in turn know more about each other.”

We were told that reform includes:

• Transparency
• Legal documentation
• Work within the justice office
• Administrative offices relating to copy write
• Implementing the intellectual property law more seriously
• Public education
• High quality lawyers and experts relating to international law

We were given this list, but no particulars. In response to questions from members of the delegation the speakers told us that lawyers are assigned to a case by the ministry, there is no consistent system for publishing or even communicating prior decisions, foreigners can only be consultants in a case and “all cases are open to the public, except for government or commercial secrets.”

Questions from our delegation were countered with questions from the panel, which culminated in the now infamous words among our group, “catfish dispute.” Bob Hirshon answered this one with his usual diplomacy.

So in wading through the information our group managed to extract from our guests, what did they say? More than the particulars perhaps they told us that it is a big step for this country, this system to open its doors to new ideas and look closely at its own areas of fragility. Perhaps the information they gave us smacks of the old adage, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” But perhaps mostly they told us, or rather we learned, that there is no greater promise for growth than the seeds of frankness and the momentum of, what was coined by the group throughout the trip, “palpable optimism for the future.”