Margaret Y. K. Woo

The Dynamism of China’s Civil Litigation System

Globally, civil procedure is the locus of dynamic experiments taking place under the radar screen of most political and social reformers. Viewed as technical answers to perceived increases in civil caseload and overburdened judges, civil procedure nevertheless contains within its rules clues about differing visions of civil justice and how that justice can be delivered. In China, civil procedure reforms take the form of the recent 2012 amendments to the Chinese civil procedure code. While changes to the Chinese civil procedure code are said to be motivated by concerns of efficiency and economy, how these reforms take shape in China, as in elsewhere, are arguably part and parcel of a country’s national identity. And China’s civil dispute resolution reflects its identity of “order over freedom, duty over rights, collective over individual interests.” (Shao-Chuan Leng & Hungdah Chiu, Criminal Justice in Post Mao China: Analysis and Documents 171 (State University of New York Press, 1985) But perversely, in the effort to preserve “order over freedom, duty over rights, collective over individual interests,” recent procedural reforms in China may undermine the raison d’etre of the procedure itself, with the potential to discourage rather than encourage the state’s goal of a “harmonious society.”

Chinese Justice. Civil Dispute Resolution in Contemporary China (W. Kessler)

Part I. Legal Development and Institutional Tensions: 1. From mediatory to adjudicatory justice: the limits of civil justice reform in China Fu Hualing and Richard Cullen 2. Judicial disciplinary systems for incorrectly decided cases: the imperial Chinese heritage lives on Carl Minzner 3. Proceduralism and rivalry in Chinas two legal states Douglas B. Grob 4. Economic development and the development of the legal profession in China Randall Peerenboom Part II. Pu Fa and the Dissemination of Law in the Chinese Context: 5. The impact of nationalist and Maoist legacies on popular trust in legal institutions Pierre F. Landry 6. Popular attitudes toward official justice in Beijing and rural China Ethan Michelson and Benjamin Read 7. Users and non-users: legal experience and its effect on legal consciousness Mary Gallagher and Yuhua Wang 8. With or without law: the changing meaning of ordinary legal work in China, 1979-2003 Sida Liu Part III. Law from the Bottom Up: 9. A populist threat to Chinas courts? Benjamin L. Liebman 10. Dispute resolution and Chinas grassroots legal services Fu Yulin 11. Constitutionalism with Chinese characteristics? Thomas E. Kellogg.

Legal Reforms in the Aftermath of Tiananmen Square

This article examines some of the new Chinese legislation passed in the aftermath of the government’s crackdown of the student pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square. As the Chinese government recovers from the crisis of Tiananmen Square, the legal activities that it has chosen to undertake and to publicize can offer a snapshot of the mentality of the leadership towards legal reform. The laws promulgated since Tiananmen Square have an overall focus of “promoting stability,” which in the Chinese government’s view, means upholding party policy. Law is being re-emphasized as a counter-balance to reform and democracy resulting in the dualities of “democracy and law, freedom and discipline, rights and duties.”