Life and Law in Interesting Places

This very personal memoir recounts the life and unusual fifty-year career of law professor Ted Parnall. From his family's immigrant origins, and his early years in the rural south valley of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Parnall and his family travelled worldwide in a career focused on legal education and legal systems in developing countries. His resolute search to understand the impact of law on diverse cultures has taken him and his family to long term assignments in several countries including Egypt, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Liberia, Laos, and Tunisia under the auspices of the Ford Foundation, the United Nations Development Programme, USAID, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. The shorter-term assignments, also dealt with in the book, have included Eritrea, China, the Balkans and Afghanistan. Life and Law in Interesting Places contains Parnall's firsthand account of a series of notable events: he was in Cairo when Anwar Sadat made his historical visit to Israel; in Lagos, Nigeria the day Biafra seceded; and in Addis Ababa when Haile Selassie was deposed. He also attended the celebration when Laos adopted its first constitution since 1975, worked as a legal advisor in Indonesia during the last years of the Suharto regime, and was in Hanoi as Vietnam turned slowly to a more market-oriented economy in the 1990s. The book also describes events of more than 30 years as a member of the faculty at the University of New Mexico School of Law, including five years as Dean of the school. During that five-year period, New Mexico adopted its unique method of selecting judges, and the book provides insights into the New Mexico legal community and its actions to assure a strong judiciary. Parnall's respect and admiration of his colleagues at the law school, the New Mexico Bench and the practicing Bar is apparent in the book, and frequently served as a backdrop for his law-development efforts abroad. While it provides a summary of several of the law-development initiatives that he has undertaken, this is not a technical book, nor does it focus exclusively on law or development issues. Much of it is a family album, recounting the interactions of his family with the diverse people and circumstances they have encountered. It is the story of a lawyer/professor and his family as they move through sometimes troubled areas of the world, always finding friends, shared values, and a sense of optimism.