John Osborn (Trinity Term 2008)

We welcome visiting research fellow John E. Osborn to the Centre for Socio- Legal Studies for Trinity Term 2008.  At Oxford, John will be developing a comparative approach in considering legal and policy questions related to the open communication of scientific and medical information, commercial free speech and the protection of public health.  He is based at Wadham College, where he completed a certificate program in 1987.

John has recently retired as Executive Vice President and General Counsel with a leading American biopharmaceutical company, where he was responsible for all legal, intellectual property, compliance, government and public affairs.

John also has longstanding interests and involvement in international affairs and public policy, having worked on Capitol Hill and on presidential campaigns, as well as serving in the U.S. State Department from 1989-92 during the administration of George H.W. Bush.  More recently, he was nominated by President George W. Bush to serve as a member of the bipartisan U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, and was sworn into office earlier this month following confirmation by the United States Senate.  John also has been a visiting fellow in politics at Princeton University; an Eisenhower Fellow to Northern Ireland, where he explored the peace process; and a member of the board of governors of the East-West Center in Honolulu, a research and education program focused on the Asia Pacific region.

John holds a law degree from the University of Virginia, and a masters degree in international public policy from Johns Hopkins.  He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and the American Law Institute.  John lives outside Philadelphia with his wife and two daughters

Sung Soo Hong, Visiting Student (April – December 2008)

Sung Soo Hong is now in the fourth and final year of his PhD studies at the London School of Economics. He is also an Overseas Legal Researcher at the Korea Legislation Research Institute, Seoul, Korea.

The "empirical" or concrete part of his thesis centres on National Human Rights Institutions in general and the NHRI in South Korea in particular. Half the thesis is concerned with an analysis of the writings of Habermas and Luhmann and how they might illuminate the functioning of such institutions.