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Legal Doctrine and Judicial Review of Eminent Domain in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2021

Wenzheng Mao  and
Shitong Qiao
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Abstract

Which of the three legal doctrines of public use, just compensation, and due process is the most effective in constraining abuses of eminent domain power? This article addresses this question for the first time and presents the first-ever systematic investigation of the judicial review of eminent domain in China. Our empirical study reveals that Chinese courts focus on eminent domain procedures while rarely supporting claims based on public interest or just compensation. Procedural rules are determinate and therefore easier to enforce than substantial standards of public interest and just compensation. Chinese courts also choose to focus on eminent domain procedures to confine their own judicial review power for the purpose of self-preservation in an authoritarian state that empowers the courts to monitor and control local governments but does not want them to become too powerful. The study calls for a “due process revolution” in eminent domain law and introduces the “judicial politics of legal doctrine” approach to the study of Chinese law, an approach that takes both political institutions and legal doctrines seriously.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , August 2021 , pp. 826 - 859
Copyright
© 2021 American Bar Foundation

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Footnotes

The authors are grateful for comments and suggestions from four anonymous reviewers and the editor-in-chief of Law & Social Inquiry, Matthew Adler, Omri Ben-Shahar, Yun-chien Chang, Ruoying Chen, Jinhua Cheng, Adam Chilton, Guobin Cui, Haibo He, Rick Hills, William Hubbard, Hongzhen Jiang, Zhuang Liu, Charles Loeffler, Richard McAdams, Susan Rose-Ackerman, Weixing Shen, Kui Shen, Frank Upham, Xixin Wang, Ryan Whalen, Crystal Yang, Taisu Zhang, and participants of the 12th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, the 2017 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies in Asia, the 2018 Annual Conference of American Law and Economics Association, and the 2018 Chicago-Tsinghua Junior Faculty Forum. Shitong Qiao acknowledges financial support from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (project number: 17612618). All errors are our own.

References

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