Ching Kwan Lee. “Law as a Contested Terrain Under Authoritarianism.” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, vol. 3, no. 1 (2014): 253-258.
This article reviews two recent books that examine the evolving role of law and legal activism under authoritarian rule in China and Hong Kong. Both works focus on the rise of public interest litigation, challenging the assumption that authoritarian regimes like the People’s Republic of China completely stifle legal resistance. The authors, Waikeung Tam and Rachel Stern, highlight how lawyers and ordinary citizens are increasingly turning to the legal system to assert rights and influence policy, revealing law as a contested space even under authoritarian governance.
Tam’s work explores how lawyers in postcolonial Hong Kong navigate a shifting political landscape, while Stern focuses on how public interest lawyers in postsocialist China mobilize legal tools to push for social change. These studies show that despite state control and constitutional enshrinement of Communist Party leadership, lawyers can act as agents of rights advocacy within constrained legal frameworks. Their actions compel a rethinking of the relationship between law and authoritarianism, showing that attorneys may play complex and sometimes contradictory roles in backsliding democracies—both operating within the system and subtly resisting it.