동료들의 축사

2001년에 발간된 "송상현 교수 화갑기념 논문집"에 실린 축사입니다.
Alford contribution to Sang-Hyun Song volume
It is no small challenge to try to write an appropriate tribute for Professor Sang-Hyun Song. One’s mind is immediately flooded with images of the Renaissance man or an idealized vision of an Yi dynasty yangban or the lawyer-statesman, to employ a more contemporary term. That welter of powerful images, each worthy in itself but none fully adequate, is as it should be, for Sang-Hyun Song is truly a singular figure . And the particular occasion of his sixtieth birthday makes the task even more daunting, as on the one hand, it seems hard to believe that Professor Song is only sixty, given how much he has managed already to accomplish while on the other, it seems hard to believe that he could already be sixty, given his youthful vigor and spirit.
Sang-Hyun Song is, of course, first and foremost a scholar in the truest meaning of the word, a man committed to uncovering and conveying the truth, illustrating in his person the Confucian admonition that at sixty, my ear obediently received the truth (liushi er er shun). At home in Korea, he has, of course, been a landmark figure, starting from the time that he overcame the skepticism of some to become the first byonhosa to join a law faculty, ranging through his years as a member of the faculty of the Seoul National University College of Law, and culminating in his tenure as dean of the College. Over that period and still, he has produced important scholarship covering an array of areas in the civil law and beyond, nurtured many of Korea’s finest younger academics, and guided his beloved alma mater and Korean legal education more broadly.
His impact abroad has been no less. He has been an ambassador in this country and far beyond for Korean law and society, doing more than anyone of his generation to acquaint us with the wonders (and the occasional rough spot) in Korea’s long and rich history regarding legal institutions. It is no exaggeration to say that we at Harvard have had no better visiting professor from abroad (as evidenced by the fact that we have happily had here in that role multiple times) while at New York University, he has given definition to the term Global Professor.
What has touched me the most, however, has not been these achievements, as grateful as I am for them, nor Professor Song’s myriad other public accomplishments (such as his years of wise counsel regarding law and education to officialdom), but his more human and perhaps less obvious qualities. For all the conviction with which he holds his beliefs, I have constantly been struck by Professor Song’s willingness to recognize and nurture talent, even in those whose views might have diverged from his own (which generosity of spirit is not, alas, a quality that I see widely enough shared among other scholars, in my country or elsewhere, of his stature). And no less importantly, I have been and am still moved as I think of the extraordinary lengths to which Professor Song routinely went during his time at Harvard to educate and assist even the rawest of undergraduates coming for the first time to Korean issues and the parental-like pride he took in their subsequent learning. It was not uncommon, for instance, during his visits at Harvard to find him capping off a long day of teaching and many extra office hours by hosting groups of students for meals to continue the educational dialogue.
And so, it is a privilege to be able to participate in this tribute to so fine a scholar and person. Thank you.
Professor, Harvard University
Director, East Asian Legal Studies Program
Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law
E-Mail: alford@law.harvard.edu
Professor, The University of Melbourne, Australia
I first met Professor Song Sang Hyun on my initial trip to Korea in 1977 to attend the Law Asia Conference. I had the unusual experience of travelling to the Conference as part of the Japanese delegation, as I was living in Tokyo at the time as a Visiting Research Scholar at the University of Tokyo. My main recollection now is being driven in his car, along with Professor Sawada of Sophia University, Japan, to see the new campus of Seoul National University. I was in my initial academic appointment at Monash University in Melbourne, and he was an established Associate Professor. It turned out to be my most important encounter at that Conference.
These days Professor Song is recognized as one of South Korea’s most eminent jurists, and is an acknowledged pioneer of research in Korea on Anglo-American legal systems. He has, in turn, pioneered the teaching of Korean law outside Korea, notably here at the University of Melbourne on three occasions, at Harvard, also on three occasions, and at New York University Law School since 1995 as part of their Global Law Program. I think his CV is ample testament to his international and national recognition.
We are very proud that he tried out his course on Korean Law here first in 1990, before going on to Harvard Law School. It was the first time that Korean Law had been taught in a graduate law program in Australia and we had enrolments from as far afield as Columbia Law School. His links to Melbourne have just been recognized by his appointment as a Professorial Fellow in our Law School for the next five years from January 1, 2002. Professorial Fellows at my university are a small but distinguished group of international scholars invited to visit the university annually for a five year period to contribute to our programs. We are delighted to announce Professor Song’s appointment in this special book marking such an important transition in his life.
Strategically, his appointment will greatly assist the development of the new alliance of the University of Melbourne with Seoul National University, signed in 2001, and with its College of Law.
Professor Song has visited the Asian Law Centre to teach in the Law School’s graduate program on three occasions, in 1990, 1992 and 1994. In recent years his appointment as Dean at Seoul National University’s College of Law and commitments in the United States at Harvard and NYU have made it difficult to bring him back to Melbourne, but Professor Song has assisted from a distance in supervision of our post-graduate students, and has facilitated our students studying at Seoul National University. He has been an advisor to the research program of the Asian Law Centre and has been a member of the International Board of the Centre for Corporations and Securities Law at our Law School for some five years. These associations have been of significant value to our Law School, even though of minor importance in the context of his many more important activities in Korea.
Long before his first visit to Melbourne, Professor Song’s book “The Introduction to Law and Legal Systems of Korea (1983)” had introduced me to the Korean legal system. It was the first substantial text and materials on Korean Law in English. It has been revised at least twice for teaching purposes. Through it, he has made Korean Law accessible to several generations of foreign lawyers.
Professor Song has established his leadership in his discipline by his frequent invitations to be a visiting Professor in the United States and Australia, and by the range of his professional leadership positions in Korea. In particular, his membership of the Advisory Committees of both the Supreme Court and the Ministry of Justice for over twenty years in each case, and his more recent Chairmanship of key Committees in other branches of the government indicate his eminence. Recognition in Korea of his academic leadership is evident in his presidencies of the national law professors’ association and the Private Law Case Research Society, and his prior presidencies of the Intellectual Property Research Society and the International Trade Law Association. I attended a conference of the latter association in the early 1990s, and his eminence in Korea was obvious.
Professor Song’s eminence in the law is matched by the breadth of his other interests. His hospitality, and that of his family, is acclaimed. No matter what brand of whisky or wine I bring, he has something much better to offer me from his shelf. On one of his visits he brought along his mother and daughter and the Smith family had the pleasure of hosting Yu-Jean for a month at our home. She made my mother quite dissatisfied with Australian grand daughters! Next time he is in Australia, I hope to find a new experience for him, but I suspect no matter what I think of, he will have done it already. I expect his life after his 60th birthdays will be as vigorous and productive as his pre 60s years. I hope to share some of them with him.
Congratulations Sang Hyun on a great start to your career!
Foundation Professor of Asian Law
Foundation Director, Asian Law Centre,
The University of Melbourne, Australia
E-Mail: m.smith@unimelb.edu.au
Professor, New York University
In the early 1990s, the Dean of New York University School of Law, John Sexton, decided to take a substantial risk. With the advice of colleagues like Norman Dorsen, former longtime President of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Jerome A. Cohen, founder of the modern study of Asian law in the United States, Sexton launched the Global Law School Program. From the viewpoint of the 21st Century a “global” program is nothing new. Indeed, whether called “globalization,” “internationalization,” or some third term, it would be difficult to find an elite American law school that has not accepted the fundamental premise of the GLSP: that the practice of law in the late 20th Century had broken national boundaries and become a global phenomenon. It followed that American legal education had to do the same if it was to prepare lawyers to succeed in this new environment and, particularly, to build the institutions that could help the world be a more stable and just place.
The idea was bold, but simple — transform legal education so that it comprehended the new reality. Implementing the idea, however, was anything but simple. It required a faculty that could bring the perspectives, experience, and wisdom of the legal universe outside the U.S. to NYU’s Washington Square campus. Needless to say, that faculty had to include a core of non-American scholars who could present their ideas and insights to an American student body and who could interact intellectually with NYU’s American faculty at the highest level.
Finding such people was not simple. First, there was a limited number of them in the world, but perhaps more important NYU needed scholars who not only were qualified in an abstract sense but who also had the imagination to understand the goal and the courage to be part of a task that could easily have failed. Prof. Song was one of the handful of people worldwide that was invited and accepted the challenge. He became one of the very first Global Law Faculty at NYU. Along with other pioneers from institutions like Cambridge University, the University of Florence, the Constitutional Court of Germany, and the University of Tokyo, he was instrumental in making the Global Law School Program a success.
Of course, his contribution to NYU is only a small part of Prof. Song’s career. But for me as the Faculty Director of the GLSP from 1997-2002 and for the students and faculty of NYU, his years of teaching and leadership have been invaluable. Prof. Song’s impact has been undoubtedly greatest in the classroom, where he has made Korean legal culture intelligible and valuable to generations of students not only at NYU but also at other American law schools. Even those not fortunate enough to have had Prof. Song as their personal teacher have been able to learn from his written work in English, including of course his unsurpassed text on Korean law.
It is not solely through teaching and scholarship, however, that Prof. Song has contributed to the world’s understanding of Korea, Korean law, and Korean institutions. He has served the Global Law School Program in a myriad of other ways as well. Perhaps the most important has been his leadership in the selection of outstanding Korean students to attend NYU. He has served on the Selection Committee for the Hauser Global Scholars since the beginning of the program and more recently he has advised the Global Public Service Law Project in its search for Korean Lawyers working in the public sector and for the public interest. In these ways he has helped integrate the Korean legal world with American legal education in a tangible as well as intellectual way.
Prof. Song will be honored in Korea for what he has accomplished and helped others accomplish in Korea. For those of us outside of Korea, however, he has been almost equally impressive. I hope that this brief essay can give Korean readers some sense of the respect and gratitude that many Americans hold for him.
Professor of Law
Faculty Director, Global Law School Program
New York University School of Law
E-Mail: frank.upham@nyu.edu

2002-01-14 화갑기념 축시,

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