Law Commons^™

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 …

Looking For Law In China Iii: How Foreign Investors And Business Have Faced Legal Uncertainty In China, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

This last of the three talks I will have given here at Oxford looks at yet another aspect of what I have called "looking for law in China." Today I will look 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 speak to you today 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 …

Looking For Law In China Ii: China’S Legal Reforms After Mao: Accomplishments And Future Prospects, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

In this talk I intend to summarize major accomplishments of Chinese law reform since 1978; and speculate on the future of Chinese law reform

• In the course of this talk, I will note where China began when legal reform was first undertaken in 1979, and the enormous size and scope of the task that was undertaken.
• I hope to give an indication both of the progress China has made, and of major obstacles to future reforms;
• I have chosen one area to emphasize because it may light the way for further meaningful reforms: administrative law
• I have also noted influences …

The Case For Tradable Remedies In Wto Dispute Settlement, Kyle Bagwell, Petros C. Mavroidis, Robert W. Staiger

Faculty Scholarship

In response to concerns over the efficacy of the WTO dispute settlement system, especially in regard to its use by developing countries, Mexico has tabled a proposal to introduce tradable remedies within the Dispute Settlement Understanding. The idea is that a country that has won cause before the WTO, and who is facing non-implementation by the author of the illegal act but feels that its own capacity to exercise its right to impose countermeasures is unlikely to lead to compliance, can auction off that right. The attractiveness of this idea is that it offers an additional possibility to injured WTO …

The Case For Auctioning Countermeasures In The Wto, Kyle Bagwell, Petros C. Mavroidis, Robert W. Staiger

Faculty Scholarship

A major accomplishment of the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations in creating the World Trade Organization (WTO) was the introduction of new dispute settlement procedures. These procedures were intended to provide a significant step forward, relative to GATT, in the settling of trade disputes, in large part by ensuring that violations of WTO commitments would be met with swift retaliation ("suspension of concessions") by the affected trading partners. While the dispute settlement procedures of the WTO indeed represent a considerable improvement over those in GATT, nine years of experience under the new procedures suggests that significant problems of enforcement remain …