Erik Jensen in Bhutan

Erik Jensen has taught and practiced in the field of law and development for 38 years and has carried out fieldwork in approximately 45 developing countries. Formerly Professor of the Practice and currently the director of the Rule of Law Program at Stanford Law School, he co-leads the Rule of Non-Law Project, a component of the Rule of Law Program that examines the use of various workarounds to the formal legal system by economic actors in developing countries. At SLS, he teaches courses related to state building, development, global poverty, and the rule of law. Erik is also a founding faculty member of the Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program at the Freeman Spogli Institute, where he serves as an affiliated core faculty at Stanfordʼs Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.  His scholarship and fieldwork focus on bridging theory and practice, and examines connections between law, economy, politics, and society.

Erik began his international career as a Fulbright Scholar. He had a long affiliation with The Asia Foundation, lived in Asia for 14 years, and led or advised research teams on governance and the rule of law at the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the African Development Bank. In recent years, he has committed considerable effort as faculty director and principal investigator of the Afghanistan Legal Education Project, which founded and developed a law degree-granting program at the American University of Afghanistan. He is also the faculty director of the Rwanda Law and Development Project at the University of Rwanda. Prior to this, Erik served as the faculty director of the Iraq Legal Education Initiative at the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani and has directed similar projects in Bhutan, Cambodia and Timor Leste.

During our program, Erik will provide a comparative perspective on Bhutan's constitutional development, discuss the relationship of law to economy in Bhutan and the region, and arrange conversations with local Bhutanese about history, politics, the economy, and the constitution.

• LLM, London School of Economics and Political Science

• JD, William Mitchell College of Law

• BA, Augustana College