Law Commons^™

Authoritarian Justice In China: Is There A Chinese Model?, Benjamin L. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

Most recent Western popular and scholarly writing on legal reform in China has focused on two apparently contradictory trends. Since coming to power in 2012 China's new leadership has significantly curtailed the limits of permissible legal activism, highlighted most clearly by the detention and prosecution of numerous leading lawyers and academics. The Party-state has also increased oversight and control over legal education and has explicitly rejected the relevance of Western models of legality for China, including concepts such as judicial independence. At the same time, China's leadership has announced some of the most significant legal reforms in decades, in particular …

Chinese Law Reform: Its Recent Past And Uncertain Future, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

Just as economic reforms were beginning in 19789-1979 and China’s leaders announced that China was going to create a “socialist market economy,” a prominent Chjinese economist said.

“Market economy” should be “a bird in the cage” of the socialist economy.

Today, Chinese law reform reflects a mixed picture: The cage has grown since the onset of reform, but the law is still a bird inside of it.

A Populist Threat To China's Courts?, Benjamin L. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

Is the Chinese party-state too responsive to public opinion? In the case of the courts, this may be the case. Western literature has devoted extensive attention to the problems in the Chinese legal system, in particular in the courts, describing a system that continues to be undermined by a range of problems, from corruption to lack of competence to continued Communist Party intervention. Likewise, existing literature describes a legal system that often is unresponsive to individual demands for justice. In this chapter, I examine another possibility: that one impediment to the development of courts that are able to protect individual …

Changing Media, Changing Courts, Benjamin L. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter examines court-media relations in China and argues that such relations are increasingly a two-way street. Media coverage is forcing the courts to act more carefully — and perhaps fairly. But pressure from the courts is also resulting in greater attention to factual reporting and professional standards in the media. This interactive relationship reflects the position of the courts and media as institutions competing for authority within the Chinese political system. It also suggests that there is significant room for ground-up development of both media and the courts.

The first section discusses the growth of media coverage of legal …

The Uncertain Future Of Legal Reform In China, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

This talk looks at how far Chinese law reform has come since 1979, possible further reforms, and obstacles to meaningful reform.

Legal Uncertainty In Foreign Investment In China: Causes And Management, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

My talk today will be based on an article – “Looking for Law in China” – that was published last year. In it, looked at Chinese law from the perspective of foreign investors that have had to cope with the uncertainty of a business environment in which legal institutions have been vague, incomplete and weak. I wrote, and today speak to you, from under two hats, that of a scholar and that of practicing lawyer, since for over thirty years I have combined those two careers. My observations here, then, are not just those from the academic ivory tower but …

Looking For Law In China, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

I have been looking for law in China for over forty years. When I started in 1963, only a handful of other Westerners had also embarked on what then seemed an exotic academic excursion. Since then, after U.S.-China relations were reestablished in 1972, many other Americans have had reason to join in the search. Now, the growing potency of China's economic strength and international reach has made efforts to understand China more important than ever, and law has become a necessary medium for use in such efforts.

This article offers insights into critical institutions and practices that mark the legal …

Looking For Law In China I: Themes And Issues In Western Studies Of Chinese Law, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

I have been studying Chinese law since the early 1960s – some have said that I began before there was any. The field has expanded so far beyond its narrow scope at that time that this overview will illustrate an old Chinese saying: "riding a horse and looking at flowers." I will first review the growth of this scholarly field, because it is necessary to understand that there are layers of scholarship that reflect first the paucity of formal legal institutions in Maoist China, then the appearance of first shoots of new or rebuilt institutions, and only recently the publication …

The Study Of Chinese Law In The United States: Reflections On The Past And Concerns About The Future, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

I am pleased to write in honor of Bill Jones by reflecting here on the study of Chinese law, which has occupied us both since the early 1960s and has since grown far beyond its narrow scope at that time. In the pages that follow, I first survey the development and current state of the field by reviewing American scholarship on some major areas of Chinese law from those early days up to the present. I am also pleased to use this review as a vehicle for noting, in particular, some of Bill's contributions to our inquiries. Some related activities …

Bird In A Cage: Chinese Law Reform After Twenty Years, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

I am grateful to the editors of this journal for inviting me to return to its pages to help mark the twentieth anniversary of its inaugural issue. History now tells us that publication of that first issue happened to coincide with the beginning of an extraordinary period in Chinese history that has seen extensive reforms transform the Chinese economy and Chinese society. These reforms, no less dramatic than the revolutionary transformations of the 1950s, have caused law to gain unprecedented importance in Chinese society. The Journal's anniversary provides an opportunity to review some of the major characteristics of Chinese legal …

Introduction: The Future Of Chinese Law, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

The interaction between the millennial dominant orientations of Chinese culture and the entire impact of modernization and of Marxism-Leninism is a story that is unfolding before our eyes, and we have no neat formula for predicting its outcome.

Studying Contemporary Chinese Law: Limits, Possibilities And Strategy, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

What can the study of Chinese law bring to the study of China itself? This Article first distills what we have learned. It reviews Chinese legal studies since their revival in the 1960s in the United States, where foreign studies of modem Chinese law has been most vigorous since the People's Republic of China ("PRC") was established. The major themes that emerged from research before the reform decade emphasized the politicization of law, the persistence of traditional cultural influences and the impact of bureaucratic practice on current institutions - all themes which remain important today. Since the advent of reform, …