Focus Global South
10 April 2025 I 18:00 (CEST)
Book Talk about “The Judicial System of China”
Li Ling and Björn Ahl in conversation with the author He Xin
About the book: The book is a systematic study of Chinese courts after Xi Jinping took power and thoroughly reformed China’s judiciary. How have Chinese courts come to the shape they are in today? How are decisions made on the major categories of cases—civil, criminal, and administrative? What drives and explains the behavior of the judges? How do the common people view the law and courts? How are the legal professions developed, and what are their roles in court? How do the judges interact with other actors—their political bosses, the prosecutors, and the lawyers? Different from the judicial independence perspective and the rights-protection approach, this book presents a governance model for understanding the operation of the Chinese court system, under which the courts have two overarching characteristics—policy implementation and legitimacy enhancement. The various policies that the courts are tasked with implementing, and the approaches the courts use for enhancing the judiciary’s legitimacy— and, by extension, that of the state, have played key roles in the courts’ evolution. This book is as much an account of Chinese courts in action as a social ethnography of China in the midst of momentous social change.
He Xin is the Mok Sau-King Professor in Law at the University of Hong Kong. He obtained his LLB and LLM from Peking University and his JSM and JSD degrees from Stanford University. He studies Chinese legal systems from a perspective of law and society. His monograph Embedded Courts: Judicial Decision Making in China with Kwai Hang Ng (CUP 2017) won multiple awards. Other monographs include Divorce in China: Institutional Constraints and Gendered Outcomes (NYU Press 2021).
Li Ling is an interdisciplinary scholar who studies Chinese public law, legal institutions, elite politics and the dynamics of the Chinese Communist Party. She holds a PhD in law from the University of Leiden. She teaches Chinese Studies at the University of Vienna. Her widely cited research on corruption, anti-corruption strategies and the political-legal system in China has gained international recognition. Her forthcoming monograph, Governance of a Party-State: Corruption, Law, and the Modus Operandi of the Chinese Communist Party, will be published by CUP in 2025.
Björn Ahl is Professor and Chair of Chinese Legal Culture at the University of Cologne. His research interests include Chinese public law, in particular constitutional development, judicial reform and rights litigation. He is also interested in Chinese attitudes towards international law, comparative law and legal culture.
Venue
Hörsaal XIa
Hauptgebäude, Universität zu Köln,
Albertus-Magnus-Platz
50931 Köln
Organized by Institute of East Asian Studies and Global South Studies Center (GSSC).