Chinese Justice: Civil Dispute Resolution in Contemporary China

Margaret Y. K. Woo · Mary E. Gallagher

Apr 2011 · Cambridge University Press

About this eBook

This volume analyzes whether China's thirty years of legal reform have taken root in Chinese society by examining how ordinary citizens are using the legal system in contemporary China. It is an interdisciplinary look at law in action and at legal institutions from the bottom up, that is, beginning with those at the ground level that are using and working in the legal system. It explores the emergent Chinese conception of justice - one that seeks to balance Chinese tradition, socialist legacies and the needs of the global market. Given the political dimension of dispute resolution in creating, settling and changing social norms, this volume contributes to a greater understanding of political and social change in China today and of the process of legal reform generally.

About the author

Margaret Y. K. Woo is Professor of Law at Northeastern University School of Law and co-director of the law school's program on Human Rights in the Global Economy. She has written and spoken widely on US procedural justice and the issue of Chinese legal reform. She was formerly a Fellow at the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College and is a research associate with the East Asian Legal Studies Center of Harvard Law School. Her publications include Litigating in America (2006) and East Asian Law - Universal Norms and Local Cultures (2003).

Mary E. Gallagher is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, where she is also the director of the Center for Chinese Studies. She is also a faculty associate at the Center for Comparative Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research. Gallagher is the author of Contagious Capitalism: Globalization and the Politics of Labor in China (2005) and the forthcoming The Rule of Law in China: If They Build It, Who Will Come? which was funded by the Fulbright Association and the National Science Foundation.