On June 2nd and 3rd, Eric Feldman participated in the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association as both a Chair of a roundtable discussion on Disasters, Law, and the State in Comparative Perspective and discussant on a panel on Disasters and Law in the Pacific Rim Region. The roundtable discussion on Disasters, Law, and the State in Comparative Perspective brought together a renowned group of sociolegal scholars, including Moritz Baelz of Goethe University Frankfurt, Erik Herber of Leiden University, Annelise Riles of Cornell Law School and Chun-Soo Yang, Yeungnam University Law School with Eric Feldman serving as Chair. The discussion explored the intersection of law and disasters from a comparative viewpoint with a primary focus on Asia and touched upon the reasoning behind why nations have not developed multinational institutions to help manage disasters as well as the degree to which these collaborative approaches to disasters are possible and/or beneficial.

The discussion on Disasters and Law in the Pacific Rim Region explored the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in 2011 and Fukushima nuclear power plant accident and how the country’s legal bodies have responded to the disasters, namely the lack of judicial decisions related to the incidences and short supply of legal services in the region. Results of this research will be published.