Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-vmclg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-19T00:45:16.610Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Economic Development and the Development of the Legal Profession in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2011

By
Randall Peerenboom
Edited by
Margaret Y. K. Woo  and
Mary E. Gallagher
Randall Peerenboom
Affiliation:
Oxford University Centre for Socio-Legal Studies; La Trobe University, Melbourne
Margaret Y. K. Woo
Affiliation:
Northeastern University, Boston
Mary E. Gallagher
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Get access

Summary

The development of the legal profession in China since 1978 has been largely a modernization story of economic development. The transition to a market economy stimulated the demand for lawyers. Conversely, lawyers contributed to economic growth, both directly through their work on commercial transactions and protecting property rights, and indirectly by promoting, along with other legal professionals, legal reforms aimed at implementing rule of law and establishing the institutions necessary for a market economy. As such, the development of the legal profession and its relationship to the market in China is broadly consistent with experiences in other countries.

However, whereas China and other East Asian countries lend support to modernization theories, they have also diverged from the more classical straight-line versions whereby all states end up with Euro-American liberal democracy. Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are all economically wealthy countries with legal systems that rank high on rule of law indices and protect both property and non-property rights reasonably well. Yet some of them continue to be nondemocratic, or somewhat dysfunctional democracies, and on the whole less liberal than their economically advanced Western counterparts. Moreover, these East Asian states have not always followed the prescribed path with respect to political reforms, economic policy, or institutional development, including the development of the legal profession.

Much of the concern of Western scholarship on the legal profession in China, and East Asia more broadly, has been on the role of the legal profession in political reforms.

Type
Chapter
Information
Chinese Justice
Civil Dispute Resolution in Contemporary China
 , pp. 114 - 136
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Peerenboom, Randall, China's Long March toward Rule of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, Donald C., Murrell, Peter, and Whiting, Susan H., “The Role of Law in China's Economic Development,” 2006, http://ssrn.com/abstract=878672 (accessed March 15, 2008).
Sander, Richard and Williams, E. Douglass, “Why Are There So Many Lawyers? Perspectives on a Turbulent Market,” Law & Social Inquiry 14, no. 3 (1989): 431–479CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halliday, Terence C. and Liu, Sida, “Birth of a Liberal Moment? Looking Through a One-Way Mirror at Lawyers' Defence of Criminal Defendants in China.” In Fighting for Political Freedom: Comparative Studies of the Legal Complex and Political Change, ed. Halliday, Terence, Karpik, Lucien, and Feeley, Malcolm M. (Oxford: Hart Press, 2007).Google Scholar
Peerenboom, Randall, China Modernizes: Threat to the West or Model for the Rest? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar
Peerenboom, Randall, Petersen, Carole J., and Chen, Albert H. Y., eds., Human Rights in Asia (London: Routledge, 2006).
Peerenboom, Randall, “Searching for Political Liberalism in all the Wrong Places: The Legal Profession as the Leading Edge of Political Reform in China?” In Lawyers and the Rule of Law in an Era of Globalization, ed. Garth, Bryant and Dezalay, Yves eds. (New York: Routledge, 2011)Google Scholar
Ginsburg, Thomas, “Law and the Liberal Transformation of the Northeast Asian Legal Complex in Korea and Taiwan.” In Fighting for Political Freedom, ed. Halliday et al.
Alford, William P., “Introduction.” In Raising the Bar: The Emerging Legal Profession in Asia, ed. Alford, William P. (Cambridge: East Asian Legal Studies, Harvard Law School, 2007)Google Scholar
Ohnesorge, John K. M., “Developing Development Theory: Law and Development Orthodoxies and Northeast Asian Experience,” 2006, http://ssrn.com/abstract=916781 (accessed October 13, 2008).
Pils, Eva, “Asking the Tiger for His Skin: Rights Activism in China,” Fordham International Law Journal 30, no. 4 (2007): 1209–1287Google Scholar
Fu, Hualing and Cullen, Richard, “Weiquan (Rights Protection) Lawyering in an Authoritarian State: Toward Critical Lawyering,” 2008, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1083925 (accessed March 15, 2008)
Peerenboom, Randall and Chen, Weitseng, “Developing the Rule of Law.” In Political Change in China: Comparisons with Taiwan, ed. Gilley, Bruce and Diamond, Larry (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2008).Google Scholar
Lee, Chang Hee, “Law and Development: Korean Contemporary History in Retrospect.” In Law and Development at the Crossroads: Asian Alternatives to Universal Schemes?, ed. McAlinn, Gerald P. and Kono, Toshiyuki (London: Routledge, 2009).Google Scholar
Chan, Kay-Wah, “The Reform of the Profession of Lawyers in Japan: Impact on the Role of Law.” In Lawyers and the Construction of Rule of Law: National and Transnational Processes, ed. Garth and Dezalay.
Peerenboom, Randall, “More Law, Less Courts: Legalized Governance, Judicialization and Dejudicialization in China.” In Administrative Law and Governance in Asia, ed. Ginsburg, Tom and Chen, Albert H. Y. (London: Routledge, 2008).Google Scholar
Peerenboom, Randall and He, Xin, “Dispute Resolution in China: Patterns, Causes and Prognosis.” In Dispute Resolution in China, ed. Peerenboom, Randall (Oxford: Oxford Foundation for Law, Justice and Society, 2008).Google Scholar
Jingwen, Zhu, ed., Zhongguo falü fazhan baogao (1979–2004) (China Legal Development Report [1979–2004]) (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2007).
Chong, Alberto and Caldéron, César, “Causality and Feedback between Institutional Measures and Economic Growth,” Economics & Politics 12, no. 1 (2000): 69–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rigobon, Roberto and Rodrik, Dani, “Rule of Law, Democracy, Openness, and Income: Estimating the Interrelationships,” Economics of Transition 13 (2005): 533–564CrossRefGoogle Scholar
He, Xin, “The Recent Decline in Chinese Economic Caseloads in Chinese Courts: Exploration of a Surprising Puzzle,” The China Quarterly, no. 190 (2007): 352–374CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gechlik, Mei Ying, “Judicial Reform in China: Lessons from Shanghai,” Columbia Journal of Asian Law 19, no. 1 (2005): 97–137Google Scholar
Yang, Dali L., Remaking the Chinese Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Xin, He, “Zhongguo fayuan de caizheng buzu yu sifa fubai” (Insufficient Financial Resources and Judicial Corruption in Chinese Courts), Ershiyi shiji (21st Century), no. 105 (February 2008): 12–23.Google Scholar
Alford, William P., “‘Second Lawyers,’ First Principles: Lawyers, Rice-Roots Legal Workers, and the Battle Over Legal Professionalism in China.” In Prospects for Professionalism in China: Essays on Civic Vocations, ed. Alford, William P., Winston, Kenneth, and Kirby, William C. (New York: Routledge, forthcoming 2009)Google Scholar
Michelson, Ethan, “Lawyers, Political Embeddedness, and Institutional Continuity in China's Transition from Socialism,” American Journal of Sociology 113, no. 2 (2007): 352–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weidong, Ji, “Zhongguo falü fuwu shichang de shikuang fenxi: Cong 2007 nian wenjuan diaocha kan lüshi shiwusuo de jingji jichu he shehui zuoyong” (An Empirical Analysis of the Legal Service Market in China: Viewing the Economic Basis and Social Role of Law Firms from the 2007 Questionnaire Research), Zhongguo lüshi (Chinese Lawyer), no. 5(2008): 84–86 and no. 6 (2008): 67–71.Google Scholar
Weidong, Ji, “Legal Education in China: A Great Leap Forward in Professionalism,” Kobe University Law Review, no. 39 (2004): 1–21.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×