Rule of Law Commons^™

What Direction For Legal Reform Under Xi Jinping?, Carl F. Minzner

Faculty Scholarship

In the fall of 2014, Chinese Communist Party authorities made legal reform the focus of their annual plenum for the first time. The Fourth Plenum Decision confirmed a shift away from some of the policies of the late Hu Jintao era, but liberal reforms still remain off the table. The top-down vision of legal reform developing under Xi Jinping’s administration may have more in common with current trends in the party disciplinary apparatus or historical ones in the imperial Chinese censorate than it does with Western rule-of-law norms. This essay attempts to do three things: (1) analyze how and why …

Riots And Cover-Ups: Counterproductive Control Of Local Agents In China, Carl F. Minzner

Faculty Scholarship

Chinese cadre responsibility systems are a core element of Chinese law and governance. These top-down personnel systems set concrete target goals linked to official salaries and career advancement. Judges and courts face annual targets for permissible numbers of mediated, reversed, and closed cases; Communist Party secretaries and government bureaus face similar targets for allowable numbers of protests, traffic accidents, and mine disasters. For many local Chinese officials, these targets have a much more direct impact on their behavior than do formal legal and regulatory norms.

This Article argues that Chinese authorities are dependent on responsibility systems, particularly their use of …