Donald Clarke is Professor of Law Emeritus at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. His academic specialty is modern Chinese law, with a particular focus on corporate governance, Chinese legal institutions, and the legal issues presented by China’s economic reforms.
In addition to his academic work, he founded and maintains Chinalaw, the leading Internet listserv on Chinese law; writes The China Collection blog and the Chinese Law Notes Substack newsletter; and is a co-editor of Asian Law Abstracts on the Social Science Research Network. He has also served as an expert witness on Chinese law matters in a number of legal cases, and has advised organizations such as the Asian Development Bank, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Public Company Accounting and Oversight Board, and the U.S. Department of Justice. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Clarke holds an A.B. degree from Princeton University, an M.Sc. degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Prior to his current position, he was on the faculty of SOAS and the University of Washington School of Law, and he has been a visiting professor at New York University Law School, UCLA School of Law, and Duke Law School.