Law Commons^™

Watchdog Or Demagogue? The Media In The Chinese Legal System, Benjamin L. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past decade, the Chinese media have emerged as among the most influential actors in the Chinese legal system. As media commercialization and increased editorial discretion have combined with growing attention to social and legal problems, the media have gained incentives to expand their traditional mouthpiece roles in new directions. As a result, the media have emerged as one of the most effective and important avenues of citizen redress. Their role in the legal system, however, has also brought them increasingly into conflict with China's courts.

This Article examines the implications of the media's roles in the Chinese legal …

Dispute Resolution In China After Deng Xiaoping: "Mao And Mediation" Revisited, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

This Article presents portions of a book tentatively entitled "Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China After Mao." The book explores the Western vantage point from which I have viewed institutions for dispute resolution, the imprint on them of the traditional and more recent Maoist past, the disorderly context of rapid economic and social change in which they must operate today, and the larger law reforms of which they are part. Against that background it examines the operation of extrajudicial mediation and the courts. The scope of this Article is more limited.

I have not speculated here about appropriate …

Form And Function In The Chinese Criminal Process, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

This article considers some of the formidable intellectual problems involved in studying the Chinese criminal process. Much can be learned about another country by studying its legal institutions; a study of sanctioning institutions promises insight into a society's view of order, deviance, individual rights, and the allocation and application of punishment. But how can foreign institutions most perceptively be studied? Only rather recently has analysis of the American criminal process become notably more sophisticated. Our own inexperience coupled with China's alienness and the lack of accurate information threaten to impede perceptive studies of Chinese institutions. But the problem is pressing …