Huyen Pham, Texas A&M University School of Law associate dean for faculty and research and professor of law, travels to Vietnam at the end of June to teach and present her research.
“This is an example of international collaboration and the international reach of our research and teaching,” Pham said. She will be teaching a condensed course on administrative law at the University of Economics and Law in Ho Chi Minh City, part of the prestigious Vietnam national university system.
Law in Vietnam is an undergraduate major, and so many of her Vietnamese students will be younger than her students at Texas A&M School of Law. "Vietnam is a civil law system, so the students will understand the U.S. administrative law focus on codes. But the U.S. administrative law system depends on having an independent judiciary to check agency power, a concept that doesn't exist in the Vietnamese legal system. I look forward to teaching U.S. administrative law and having good discussions with my students."
She and her co-author, Van Pham (associate professor of economics at Baylor University), will also present their research, "Domestic Migration and the Divergence in State-Created Immigration Climate," at the Vietnam Economist Annual Meeting in Ho Chi Minh City, June 24-25.
This isn’t the first time Pham has taught in Vietnam. She received a Fulbright teaching grant to teach in Vietnam for the 2010-2011 academic year. Her primary concern is being able to give back to others.
“If you’re a doctor, you can provide medical care for the poor. If you’re a law professor, you teach ... I want to go back to help advance legal education in Vietnam,” she said in a previous law school alumni magazine interview. See the complete article.
Pham’s scholarship focuses on immigration law and the role of subfederal governments in immigration law enforcement. In the immigration policy debate, the question of who enforces our immigration laws can be as significant as what those policies are, and Pham’s most recent projects have explored the implications of changing enforcement roles for the federal government, local governments and private parties.
Read Professor Pham's faculty profile to learn more.