Engaging the Law in China: State, Society, and Possibilities for Justice

This interdisciplinary book of essays addresses critical issues arising from the emergence of legal institutions in contemporary China. One section of the book focuses on the legal process: how law is mobilized by ordinary people to redress injustice, the role of legal culture, the extent to which citizens can sue state officials, and how disputes involving workers and veterans are settled. A second set of papers explores specific legal institutions, such as the security apparatus, labor reeducation camps, and rules that punish infringement of intellectual property rights. Almost all the contributors are social scientists who have recently engaged in field research in China. The introduction by the editors and the individual chapters attempt, for the first time, to bring to bear on the study of Chinese law the law-and-society scholarship that has enriched Western legal studies in recent years.