Jonathan Hecht

Jonathan Hecht, "Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School, is one of the country’s leading authorities on contemporary Chinese law and an important scholar of Chinese criminal procedure. Before coming to Yale, Mr. Hecht worked for four years in the Beijing office of the Ford Foundation and taught Chinese law at Harvard Law School. He has more than ten years experience as a program officer and consultant on legal reform projects in China with the Ford Foundation, the United Nations, the U.S. State Department, and other organizations. Mr. Hecht earned his J.D. from Harvard, and his A.B. from Stanford University." 

In Remarks to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China in 2002, Jonathan Hecht noted that: "For four years, as a Program Officer in the Beijing office of the Ford Foundation, I made grants in China to support research and advocacy on human rights and related legal issues, to strengthen legal education and training, to promote village elections and other forms of popular participation, and to establish China's first nongovernmental legal aid centers. I have been an adviser to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on how to develop its new program of assistance for Chinese legal reform. I have been an analyst and consultant on Chinese legal developments for human rights groups here in the United States. And in 1999, I helped found The China Law Center at Yale Law School, where in addition to teaching and conducting research on Chinese law, we are developing and carrying out cooperative legal reform projects between U.S. and Chinese legal experts, many of them with important human rights implications." 

He has worked for Human Rights First and he is a member of the Human Rights Watch Asia Advisory Committee.