This book is an antecedent study on the task facing China's legal science, more strictly speaking — China's legal philosophy, in post-Cold War world structure. In broader terms, this is an academic study of China's own “identity” and future in the world structure. The author believes that from 1978 to 2004, in spite of its great achievements, China's legal science has at the same time had some of its grave problems being exposed. A fundamental problem is its failure to provide a “Chinese legal ideal picture” as the standard of and direction for evaluating, assessing and guiding China's law/legal development. This is an age of law without China's own ideal picture(s). However, why has China failed to have its own legal ideal picture(s)? Apparently this question in and of itself implies a question, both more directly and fundamentally, of China's legal science, namely why China's legal science has failed to provide China's own legal picture(s)? Or, as an internal critical approach may suggest (namely to critique China's legal science from the perspective of its promised objectives), where is China's legal science heading? Based on this, this book attempts to expound a standard to evaluate China's legal science through a theoretical discussion of this issue, and to further explore the possible direction for China's legal science beyond this age.

This book is the result of the collective effort of some of the foremost experts and scholars of Chinese law, Asian law, and Chinese economics and carefully examines the relationship between law and China’s economic development. Serious inquiries and candid opinions of the contributors have made for stimulating discussion and debate in many controversial areas. This book is likely to result in further research into factors affecting China’s economic development, political change, and China’s interaction with the international community. The book explores the development of the Chinese legal system from both China’s historical perspective, taking into account the specific political and socioeconomic factors that are shaping Chinese law, and from a comparative perspective exploring the interaction between China and the rest of the world. The book brings together key international scholars of Chinese law and economics including Hualing Fu, Roda Mushkat, Randall Peerenboom, Zhigang Tao and Frank Upham. The first part of the book focuses on the linkages between the formal law and China’s economic development, looking at Chinese courts, economic institutions and firm behaviour as well as contract enforcement and property rights. Part two deals with issues of law, human rights, and social justice as they relate to economic and human development. Taken as a whole, the book offers a unique discourse on the interaction between law and economic and human development in China.

This book delivers a comprehensive, insightful, and updated analytic description of contemporary Chinese legal system. From a macro perspective, it presents, both theoretically and empirically, the evolution of Chinese law, describing its distinctive features, comparing it with other experiences across the world, and exploring the influence of economic, social, cultural, and technological factors thereon. From a micro perspective, based on the latest laws and regulations so promulgated and relevant research, this book briefly summarizes the basic theories and knowledge of existing law in the PRC, including the Constitution, civil law, criminal law, administrative law, procedural law, intellectual property law, economic law, etc. With this book, not only law students, lawyers, and those who have a background in Chinese law but also general readers can catch a penetrating glimpse into the fast-changing Chinese legal system.

This book takes the reader on a sweeping tour of the international legal field to reveal some of the patterns of difference, dominance, and disruption that belie international law's claim to universality. Pulling back the curtain on the "divisible college of international lawyers," Anthea Roberts shows how international lawyers in different states, regions, and geopolitical groupings are often subject to distinct incoming influences and outgoing spheres of influence in ways that reflect and reinforce differences in how they understand and approach international law. These divisions manifest themselves in contemporary controversies, such as debates about Crimea and the South China Sea. Not all approaches to international law are created equal, however. Using case studies and visual representations, the author demonstrates how actors and materials from some states and groups have come to dominate certain transnational flows and forums in ways that make them disproportionately influential in constructing the "international." This point holds true for Western actors, materials, and approaches in general, and for Anglo-American (and sometimes French) ones in particular. However, these patterns are set for disruption. As the world moves past an era of Western dominance and toward greater multipolarity, it is imperative for international lawyers to understand the perspectives and approaches of those coming from diverse backgrounds. By taking readers on a comparative tour of different international law academies and textbooks, the author encourages them to see the world through the eyes of others -- an essential skill in this fast changing world of shifting power dynamics and rising nationalism.

This book studies ideological divisions within Chinese legal academia and their relationship to arguments about the rule of law. The book describes argumentative strategies used by Chinese legal scholars to legitimize and subvert China's state-sanctioned ideology. It also examines Chinese efforts to invent new, alternative rule of law conceptions. In addition to this descriptive project, the book advances a more general argument about the rule of law phenomenon, insisting that many arguments about the rule of law are better understood in terms of their intended and actual effects rather than as analytic propositions or descriptive statements. To illustrate this argument, the book demonstrates that various paradoxical, contradictory and otherwise implausible arguments about the rule of law play an important role in Chinese debates about the rule of law. Paradoxical statements about the rule of law, in particular, can be useful for an ideological project.

Law, by its very nature, tends to think locally, not globally. This book has a broader scope in terms of the range of nations and offers a succinct journey through law schools on different continents and subject matters. It covers education, research, impact and societal outreach, and governance. It illustrates that law schools throughout the world have much in common in terms of values, duties, challenges, ambitions and hopes. It provides insights into these aspirations, whilst presenting a thought-provoking discussion for a more global agenda on the future of law schools. Written from the perspective of a former dean, the book offers a unique understanding of the challenges facing legal education and research.