Alumni Spotlight: Xiaosheng Huang ’00
In his native China, Xiaosheng Huang was a graduate of Beijing’s Foreign Affairs College and a People’s Representative in Shanghai. After he came to Notre Dame to pursue his LL.M. in international human rights, he passed the New York Bar and became a practicing lawyer in Las Vegas.
But Huang says his greatest ambition is to be a bridge between China and the United States—and he is already succeeding on many fronts. In November, he traveled to Beijing where he was named Overseas Counsel for the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, an NGO that unites and protects Chinese people living outside China.
“I travel between the two greatest countries on earth every two months,” says Huang, who often lectures to Chinese judges, lawyers, law students and leaders on the American legal system. Meanwhile, his Las Vegas law firm handles immigration matters for people from countries around the world, as well as international business for Chinese and U.S. clients. Huang is so busy that he plans to extend his practice to Beijing, Shanghai, Washington D.C. and New York in the near future.
Most interesting of all, Huang published a book on the American legal system last year that has become a bestseller among Beijing lawyers and won a prestigious award in Taipei. The book, Suing the USA, “has had a surprising but significant effect,” says Huang. It describes how the U.S. system allows ordinary people, “including non-citizens, to seek protection of their civil and human rights in the federal courts. Writs of mandamus and habeas corpus, which I frequently file, are very common in the U.S.—yet they are relatively new to Chinese jurisprudence.” The Chinese people want to know more about these remedies, Huang says, as a step toward constructively engaging their government in promoting and protecting human rights.
Tracing the roots of his success, he says, “Notre Dame Law School gave me the best possible legal education. My parents taught me how to think and my teachers in China taught me how to read and write. Notre Dame, however, taught me how to combine these endeavors, not only creatively but correctly.”
Huang says his experience in the LL.M. program was “critical to my understanding that a well-constituted and equitably administered legal system provides the optimal means for successfully resolving problems and controversies.” In the past, he was critical of China’s legal system but now wants to play a positive role, guiding initiatives that “give the common people more and more access, particularly in regard to human rights issues. I am pleased to report that China is making significant progress in this regard. This progress is good for China and for the world.”
