This article challenges the common view that Chinese lawyers are either dissident activists or politically disengaged professionals by focusing on a third category: lawyers who work closely with the state while still engaging in governance.
This article examines how the Chinese state manages and shapes the legal profession in ways that support authoritarian rule, using mechanisms of professional socialization rather than relying solely on repression.
This book provides a powerful analysis of the role of human rights lawyers operating within an authoritarian legal regime, focusing on China.
This article explores the complex role of legal reform within authoritarian regimes, focusing on activist lawyers in China who strive to use the law to protect rights and promote social change.
A decade after China’s largest crackdown on human rights lawyers—the 2015 “709 incident”—legal professionals and activists report that government control over the legal system has intensified under Xi Jinping. While once there was space for lawyers to defend civil rights within China’s own legal framework, today those involved in sensitive cases face harassment, surveillance, and …
Yueduan Wang, “The More Authoritarian, the More Judicial Independence? The Paradox of Court Reforms in China and Russia.” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol. 22, no. 2 (2020): 529-560. Summary: Drawing conclusions largely from democracies, existing theories often positively associate judicial independence with political competition. This Article argues that a negative relationship exists …
Ying Sun and Hualing Fu, “Of Judge Quota and Judicial Autonomy: An Enduring Professionalization Project in China.” The China Quarterly, vol. 251 (2022): 866–87. Summary: This article presents the findings of original research on “judge quota” reform. The reform’s agenda was essentially aimed at professionalization: by edging out a given percentage of judges, only the better …
Kwai Ng, Hang, and Xin He, Embedded Courts: Judicial Decision-Making in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Summary: Embedded Courts is laden with tension. Chinese courts are organized as a singular and unified system yet grassroots courts in urban and rural regions differ greatly in the way they use the law and are as diverse …
Benjamin L Liebman, “China’s Courts: Restricted Reform.” The China Quarterly, no. 191 (2007): 620–38. Summary: Recent developments in China’s courts reflect a paradox largely avoided in literature on the subject: Can China’s courts play an effective role in a non-democratic governmental system? Changes to courts’ formal authority have been limited, courts still struggle to address basic …
Liebman, Benjamin L. “A Populist Threat to China’s Courts?,” in Chinese Justice: Civil Dispute Resolution in Contemporary China. Edited by Margaret Y. K. Woo & Mary E. Gallagher, pp. 269-313. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2011). Summary: Is the Chinese party-state too responsive to public opinion? In the case of the courts, this may be the …