- 10/F, Cheng Yu Tung Tower
Centennial Campus
The University of Hong Kong
Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong
Sida Liu
The University of Hong Kong, Department of Law, Faculty of Law, Faculty Member
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University of Toronto, Sociology, Faculty Member add
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Sociology of Law, Sociology of Professions, Social Theory, Legal Profession, Chinese Law, Sociology of Organizations, and 21 moreSocial Change, Political Sociology, Sociology, Law, Law and Society, Lawyers, Criminal Justice, Sociolegal studies, Contemporary China, Chinese Studies, Legal Anthropology, Legal Education, East Asian Studies, Work and Labour, Chinese Politics, China, Qualitative Methods (Sociology), Professionalism, Chinese Law and Society, Qualitative Research, and Sociology of Expertise edit
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Personal website: http://www.sidaliu.net/edit
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Criminal Defense in China studies empirically the everyday work and political mobilization of defense lawyers in China. It builds upon 329 interviews across China, and other social science methods, to investigate and analyze the... more
Criminal Defense in China studies empirically the everyday work and political mobilization of defense lawyers in China. It builds upon 329 interviews across China, and other social science methods, to investigate and analyze the interweaving of politics and practice in five segments of the practicing criminal defense bar in China from 2005 to 2015. This book is the first to examine everyday criminal defense work in China as a political project. The authors engage extensive scholarship on lawyers and political liberalism across the world, from seventeenth-century Europe to late twentieth-century Korea and Taiwan, drawing on theoretical propositions from this body of theory to examine the strategies and constraints of lawyer mobilization in China. The book brings a fresh perspective through its focus on everyday work and ordinary lawyering in an authoritarian context and raises searching questions about law and lawyers, politics and society, in China's uncertain future.
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How to do empirical legal studies without numbers? This article addresses this methodological question at a crossroads of empirical legal studies in China. It does not aim to provide a normative defence for the value of qualitative... more
How to do empirical legal studies without numbers? This article addresses this methodological question at a crossroads of empirical legal studies in China. It does not aim to provide a normative defence for the value of qualitative methods. Instead, we demonstrate how a "scientific turn" in the 2010s has made empirical legal research in China almost exclusively about quantitative research and then illustrate how qualitative methods can also benefit from the rise of digital technology. We draw on three recent studies as examples to compare and contrast the methodological challenges and opportunities for doing empirical legal studies without numbers: (1) Ke Li's book Marriage Unbound as an example of ethnography in combination with archival research; (2) Sitao Li's article "Face-Work in Chinese Routine Criminal Trials" as an example of trial video observation; and (3) Di Wang and Sida Liu's article "Performing 'Artivism' " as an example of online ethnography. The discussion shows that, despite the rising popularity of "big data" computational analysis in recent years, quantitative methods are not necessarily more technologically advanced than qualitative ones. Technology-assisted interviews and ethnography can open up many new possibilities in data collection and data analysis, sometimes resulting in more exciting and innovative research.
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本文从齐美尔、帕克、戈夫曼三位社会学家笔下的社会空间入手，对芝加哥学派的理论传统中关于社会空间的经典论述进行分析和梳理。对于齐美尔和芝加哥学派而言，社会空间的存在基础是行为主体之间的社会互动，而社会实体和结构都是从这些互动过程中产生的。这个理论传统强调物理空间与社会空间的相互依赖性，对于社会空间的假设具有内生性、时间性两个重要特征，并注重空间与人类情感的关联。
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在新发展格局下着力推动高质量发展，对当代中国职业的劳动分工基础和专业技能发展方向都提出了新要求。高质量的专业技能并不一定是高度标准化或理性化的，而是要以专业人士的职业自主性为基础，在职业系统的各种生态圈和食物链中通过长期实践经验积累，由不同职业之间的社会互动逐渐形成。涂尔干的社会分工论、新韦伯主义学派的市场控制论、芝加哥学派的职业系统论等职业社会学基本理论对于理解当代中国职业发展都提供了有益的思路，从对这些理论的借鉴和批判所发展出的一个基于当代中国社会经验、以专业技能和职业生... more
在新发展格局下着力推动高质量发展，对当代中国职业的劳动分工基础和专业技能发展方向都提出了新要求。高质量的专业技能并不一定是高度标准化或理性化的，而是要以专业人士的职业自主性为基础，在职业系统的各种生态圈和食物链中通过长期实践经验积累，由不同职业之间的社会互动逐渐形成。涂尔干的社会分工论、新韦伯主义学派的市场控制论、芝加哥学派的职业系统论等职业社会学基本理论对于理解当代中国职业发展都提供了有益的思路，从对这些理论的借鉴和批判所发展出的一个基于当代中国社会经验、以专业技能和职业生态系统为核心内容的职业研究分析框架，有助于阐释新发展格局的劳动分工意义及其对我国各职业的发展、互动和国际化的影响。
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This article uses the case of law firms in Hong Kong to develop a processual approach for understanding lateral mobility in professional service firms. Based on the analysis of 1,461 lateral moves of law firm partners reported in 300... more
This article uses the case of law firms in Hong Kong to develop a processual approach for understanding lateral mobility in professional service firms. Based on the analysis of 1,461 lateral moves of law firm partners reported in 300 monthly issues of the official journal of the Law Society of Hong Kong during 1994-2018, as well as archival data and interviews conducted in Hong Kong, the article offers both a bird's-eye view of the lateral mobility of partners across law firms of different jurisdictional origins and an in-depth investigation of how elite law firms in this market, namely the Magic Circle and Wall Street firms, are influenced by the dynamics of professional flows. Theoretically, the article reconceptualizes professional service firms as organizations connected by and transform through the flows of professionals between them, a dynamic process characterized by three key concepts: waves, cycles, and turning points. In addition to its theoretical contribution, the study has broader implications for understanding Hong Kong's economic transformation since the 1990s, particularly after Hong Kong's handover to China in 1997 and the global financial crisis in 2008.
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How do dignity discourses shift the framing of struggles for basic legal freedoms? Based on our decadelong empirical research on lawyers and politics in China, we provide a theoretical intervention in a burgeoning socio-legal scholarship... more
How do dignity discourses shift the framing of struggles for basic legal freedoms? Based on our decadelong empirical research on lawyers and politics in China, we provide a theoretical intervention in a burgeoning socio-legal scholarship on dignity in this article. Drawing inductively from in-depth interviews, we find that a powerful current of dignity consciousness and sentiment, joined by an acute awareness of dignity harms, flows through the community of Chinese activist lawyers. Their dignity discourses can be witnessed and explained in four streams of awareness: (1) dignity experienced as an ideal in juridical, philosophical, and theological idioms; (2) dignity takings experienced indirectly and directly in the property takings of clients' homes, farms, and livelihood; (3) assaults on dignity through property takings of spaces of religious worship; and (4) the takings of professional dignity from the lawyers charged with defending the dignity of others. This article points to the value of dignity framings in the general theory of collective action for basic legal freedoms.
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Conflict of laws, including choice of law, is conventionally understood as judges or lawyers choosing the governing law in a multijurisdictional matter. In this Article, we turn this notion on its head to ask whether the rules may also... more
Conflict of laws, including choice of law, is conventionally understood as judges or lawyers choosing the governing law in a multijurisdictional matter. In this Article, we turn this notion on its head to ask whether the rules may also choose the legal experts. Drawing on legal anthropology and sociology, we argue that the legal forms of Chinese outbound investment, namely, the heterogeneous nature of contracts and different jurisdictions for Chinese capital, generate a specific ecology of legal expertise. In particular, the legal form is generated by rules from both the home state (i.e., China) and the host states of Chinese capital. While choice of law is often subject to parties' bargaining, and China, as capital-exporter, may occupy a dominant bargaining position vis-à-vis the host state, the territorial sovereignty and mandatory norms of the latter frequently require local law. Consequently, whereas the legal form produces an ecology of legal professionals, including lawyers in Chinese law firms, regional financial centers, U.K. and U.S. law firms, and local firms, it is often the local lawyers who play a pivotal role in generating and sustaining China's cross-border deals. This Article finds that China's "rise" may not reproduce familiar forms of law and globalization-at least not initially. From the perspective of private international law, China itself appears unlikely to overturn the existing international legal order, even if that order is currently undergoing a severe test and China may wish to reform the order to occupy a central role. Rather, our analysis suggests that top-down perspectives on international legal orders must be mirrored and contested by bottom-up ones; such a holistic view spotlights the highly contingent nature of Chinese outbound capital.
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法律社会学研究应当如何叙事？本文以2020... more
法律社会学研究应当如何叙事？本文以2020 年以来波及全球的新冠肺炎疫情为例，通过对中、美、加等几个不同国家的疫情应对政策、制度与实践的比较，探讨数字、制度、人心这三种法律社会学叙事方式的长处和不足。数字和访谈材料、历史文献一样，都只是社会科学研究的原材料，数字和叙事的关系并非彼此对立，而是相辅相成的。从“书本上的法”与“行动中的法”之间的差异和互动入手，分析和理解法律制度的制定和实践过程中的各种与社会语境有关的因素，是法律社会学研究的基本功。而要写出有情感的叙事，研究者必须让自己沉浸在要讲述的故事里，和其中的人物和事件同悲喜、共命运。这种关于人心的叙事是民族志等质性研究的经典叙事方式，在我国的法律社会学研究中也占据举足轻重的地位。
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This article draws on the two authors' extensive fieldwork experiences in studying Chinese feminists and lawyers on social media to offer some thoughts on how to conduct qualitative research in the digitalized world. We argue that... more
This article draws on the two authors' extensive fieldwork experiences in studying Chinese feminists and lawyers on social media to offer some thoughts on how to conduct qualitative research in the digitalized world. We argue that qualitative methods such as participation observation, in-depth interview, and textual analysis can provide thick descriptions and deep, localized knowledge of social processes that go far beyond the sketches of Big Data. Social science data collection and analysis on social media need not only Big Data's bird's-eye view, but also the day-today ethnographic immersion-"living on the sites" and interacting with research subjects over a long period of time. The rise of social media has not changed the basic principles of doing ethnography, such as the importance of immersion and reflexivity. Nevertheless, ethnography of online groups presents new challenges and opportunities in terms of accessing field sites, analyzing ethnographic data, and research ethics.
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This article develops a relational explanation for judicial corruption, namely, a spatial theory of institutional proximity, to complement existing behavioral and institutional approaches. Institutional proximity refers to the spatial... more
This article develops a relational explanation for judicial corruption, namely, a spatial theory of institutional proximity, to complement existing behavioral and institutional approaches. Institutional proximity refers to the spatial proximity between adjacent political or social institutions, including courts. This proximity can be a result of political or administrative regulations, workplace interactions, or the mobility of individual actors between them. Linking ecologies and space travelers are two key spatial mechanisms through which institutional proximity enables judicial corruption. They pave the pathways of judicial corruption, that is, how corrupt transactions and related social interactions are facilitated by and communicated through institutions adjacent to the court. The theory is operationalized in the context of Chinese courts and the various pathways of judicial corruption are exemplified through a number of publicly reported cases in China.
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In his book on legal reform in China after Mao, Stanley B. Lubman adopted the metaphor “bird in a cage” to describe the status of Chinese law at the turn of the twenty-first century. This article offers some general reflections on the... more
In his book on legal reform in China after Mao, Stanley B. Lubman adopted the metaphor “bird in a cage” to describe the status of Chinese law at the turn of the twenty-first century. This article offers some general reflections on the social transformation of Chinese law since 1999, with the objective of explaining (1) how the legal bird has become a cage, and (2) how this new legal cage has been used to trap birds in Chinese society. It first traces the transformation of the legal bird into a cage in China’s reform era and then tells the stories of four species of birds currently confined in the legal cage, namely, hawks (state officials), crows (rights activists), sparrows (netizens), and ostriches (ordinary citizens). Laws related to the four species are concerned with combating corruption, political stability, internet control, and everyday life, respectively. By focusing on the four species of birds in the legal cage, this article offers a fresh understanding of how law interacts with various individuals and social groups in Chinese society and a sociolegal explanation of the social transformation of China’s legal system from 1999 to 2019.
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China’s rapid rise as a global power in the early twenty-first century has significant economic and political consequences to markets and legal systems across the world, particularly in Asia. Focusing on the rapid growth of Chinese law... more
China’s rapid rise as a global power in the early twenty-first century has significant economic and political consequences to markets and legal systems across the world, particularly in Asia. Focusing on the rapid growth of Chinese law firms in Hong Kong in recent years, this article examines how a contested gateway for the globalization of Chinese law is being constructed through China’s outbound investments, the overseas expansion of Chinese law firms, and the mobility of lawyers between Western and Chinese firms. Based on empirical analyses of the career profiles of all partners in a sample of sixteen Chinese law offices and their associated local law firms in Hong Kong as of May 2018, as well as archival data on partner moves to and from Chinese law firms during 2009-2018, this study captures the dynamics of a critical moment for both Hong Kong and the future of Chinese law firms.
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Professionals often dislike dirty work, yet they accommodate or even embrace it in everyday practice. This chapter problematizes Andrew Abbott's professional purity thesis by examining five major forms of impurities in professional work,... more
Professionals often dislike dirty work, yet they accommodate or even embrace it in everyday practice. This chapter problematizes Andrew Abbott's professional purity thesis by examining five major forms of impurities in professional work, namely impurity in expertise, impurity in jurisdictions, impurity in clients, impurity in organizations, and impurity in politics. These impurities complicate the relationship between purity and status as some impurities may enhance professional status while others may jeopardize it, especially when the social origins of professionals are rapidly diversifying and professional work is increasingly intertwined with the logics of market and bureaucracy. Taking impurities seriously can help the sociology of professions move beyond the idealistic image of an independent, disinterested professional detached from human emotions, turf battles, client influence, and organizational or political forces and towards a more pragmatic understanding of professional work, expertise, ethics and the nature of professionalism.
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In authoritarian contexts where the state is the primary performer in the public sphere and legal mobilization is constrained and repressed, activists often seek to carve out a public space to confront the frontstage and backstage of the... more
In authoritarian contexts where the state is the primary performer in the public sphere and legal mobilization is constrained and repressed, activists often seek to carve out a public space to confront the frontstage and backstage of the state’s performance in order to pursue collective action. Comparing the online legal mobilization of feminist and lawyer activists in China, this article investigates how performance arts are used by activists to challenge the authoritarian state in the age of social media. Performing “artivism” is to create conspicuous spectacles in the public eye for the purposes of exposing the state’s illegal or repressive backstage actions or promoting alternative values and norms different from the official ideology. By subversively disrupting the evidential boundaries set by the state, Chinese activists have been able to gain momentum and public support for their legal mobilization. However, it was precisely the success of their artivism that contributed to the government crackdowns on both feminists and lawyers in 2015.
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Sociologists often imagine society as spaces, yet how social spaces are related remains ambiguous in most theories. In developing his field theory, Bourdieu used extensively the concept of homology to describe the structural similarities... more
Sociologists often imagine society as spaces, yet how social spaces are related remains ambiguous in most theories. In developing his field theory, Bourdieu used extensively the concept of homology to describe the structural similarities across fields, but he had not taken seriously the spaces between fields or how fields are related to each other. Adopting the Simmelian approach of formal sociology, this article outlines six basic social forms by which social spaces are related. It argues that relations between social spaces can be understood along two dimensions: heterogeneity and social distance. In terms of heterogeneity, social spaces can be kindred, symbiotic or oppositional. In terms of social distance, they can be linked, nested or overlapping. These social forms of interspatial relations are constituted by the boundary work of a variety of actors, including guardians, brokers and space travellers. The article provides a general vocabulary for thinking about how social spaces are related and how they interact across boundaries.
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This article examines the production of corporate legal elite through a systematic analysis of the profiles of the first three cohorts of partners in nine elite corporate law firms in Beijing. We argue that the social production of the... more
This article examines the production of corporate legal elite through a systematic analysis of the profiles of the first three cohorts of partners in nine elite corporate law firms in Beijing. We argue that the social production of the Chinese corporate legal elite is primarily an outcome of domestic social factors rather than international factors. It is characterized by local elite recruitment from elite universities and endogenous elite circulation within the Red Circle firms. International credentials and work experience come only secondary to education and work experience in elite Chinese law schools and law firms for achieving elite status in the profession. Yet, international experience plays a role in promoting gender equality in elite professional service firms. This article contributes to the study of globalization and elite production in professional service firms by investigating how local and global forces manifest themselves in elite production in a major emerging market.
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This article develops an ecological theory that shifts the paradigm of professional mobilization from causes to relational spaces. It analyzes different species of activist professionals by locating them in an ecology of activism and... more
This article develops an ecological theory that shifts the paradigm of professional mobilization from causes to relational spaces. It analyzes different species of activist professionals by locating them in an ecology of activism and examining how collective action emerges from their boundary work with the ecology's increasing density and consolidation. It empirically grounds the theory by explaining the political activism of Chinese lawyers in the early twenty‐first century and how it led to a government crackdown in 2015. Using interviews, online ethnography, and archival data collected from 2005 to 2017, the research demonstrates that Chinese lawyers’ political mobilization has experienced three stages: (1) vacancy and isolation (2000–2007), (2) spatial consolidation (2008–2011), and (3) boundary work (2011–2015). The study has implications for theories of social space and for understanding professional mobilization in authoritarian contexts and beyond.
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Existing scholarship of China's legal institutions has primarily focused on individual institutions, such as the court, the police, or the legal profession. This article proposes a relational approach to the study of political-legal... more
Existing scholarship of China's legal institutions has primarily focused on individual institutions, such as the court, the police, or the legal profession. This article proposes a relational approach to the study of political-legal institutions in China. To understand the order and exercise of power by various political-legal institutions, the relational approach emphasizes the spatial positions of actors or institutions (the police, courts, lawyers, etc.) within the broader political-legal system and their mutual interactions. We suggest that the changing ideas of the Chinese leadership about the role of law as an instrument of governance have shaped the relations between various legal and political institutions. The interactions of these political-legal institutions (e.g. the "iron triangle" of the police, the court and the procuracy) further reveal the dynamics of power relations at work.
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This article outlines a processual theory of action for the sociology of professions. It argues that existing theories of the professions focus primarily on the questions of social order and social change in professional life but overlook... more
This article outlines a processual theory of action for the sociology of professions. It argues that existing theories of the professions focus primarily on the questions of social order and social change in professional life but overlook the basic question of social action, namely, what do professionals do? Individual professionals, their clients, and regulators are all purposive actors, and the professions are the outcomes of their collective action in the system of work. These actors in professional life fight for jurisdictions with boundary work, define expertise by diagnostic struggle and coproduction, and build social networks through exchange. Following the interactionalist tradition of the Chicago School of work and occupations, the processual theory of professional action examines the interactions of professionals and other actors over, within, and across boundaries and uses this theory of action to complement existing theories of order and change.
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The sociology of professions has derived most of its theories from empirical cases in the Global North. Despite the growing number of empirical studies on professionals in developing countries, the intersection between professions and... more
The sociology of professions has derived most of its theories from empirical cases in the Global North. Despite the growing number of empirical studies on professionals in developing countries, the intersection between professions and development has rarely been theorized. This article uses the case of legal services professionals in China to outline an ecological theory of professions and development. It argues that, in the Global South, professions and development are overlapping ecologies that share some common actors and transform by similar social processes. Professionals occupy at least four different positions in the ecology of development: as facilitators of global institutional diffusion, as delegates of the nation-state, as brokers between global and national market institutions, and as activists of local social resistance. In the process of development, those four types of professionals are often in conflict, and the ecology of professions differentiates among them by means of their social interactions in issue areas such as economic growth, access to justice, and human rights.
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On paper, the state-run lawyer disciplinary system in China serves multiple interests: client protection, maintaining the reputation of the legal profession, upholding the rule of law, and safeguarding the party-state authority. This... more
On paper, the state-run lawyer disciplinary system in China serves multiple interests: client protection, maintaining the reputation of the legal profession, upholding the rule of law, and safeguarding the party-state authority. This Article assesses which of these interests dominates in the lawyer disciplinary process by analyzing 122 published lawyer discipline cases from Zhejiang Province from 2007–2015. These records of lawyer discipline evidence an authoritarian political logic of attorney discipline, with punishment most clearly serving to safeguard the Communist Party's rule by keeping lawyers in bounds and tightly tied to their law firms. Subordinate to this are other state interests such as upholding the legal system and rule of law, as well as private interests of protecting firm income. Client protection is a secondary interest at best, with only a handful of cases having clear client-protection goals. The dominance of party-state interests reflects not only the socialist legacy, but also the persistence of an authoritarian legality in contemporary China.
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Since the 1990s, the number of women in Chinese courts has been increasing steadily. Many women judges have risen to mid-level leadership positions, such as division chiefs and vice-chiefs, in the judicial bureaucracy. However, it remains... more
Since the 1990s, the number of women in Chinese courts has been increasing steadily. Many women judges have risen to mid-level leadership positions, such as division chiefs and vice-chiefs, in the judicial bureaucracy. However, it remains difficult for women to be promoted to high-level leadership positions, such as vice-presidents and presidents. What explains the stratified patterns of career mobility for women in Chinese courts? In this article, we argue that two social processes are at work in shaping the structural patterns of gender inequality: dual-track promotion and reverse attrition. Dual-track promotion is dominated by a masculine and corrupt judicial culture on the political track that prevents women from obtaining high-level promotions, but still allows them to rise to mid-level leadership positions on the professional track based on their expertise and work performance. Reverse attrition enables women to take vacant mid-level positions left by men who exit the judiciary to pursue other careers. Taken together, the vertical and horizontal mobility of judges in their career development presents a processual logic to gender inequality and shapes women's structural positions in Chinese courts, a phenomenon that we term the " elastic ceiling. "
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In the global legal services market, China has some of the youngest law firms but also some of the largest. In the early 21st century, several Chinese law firms have grown into mega law firms, with thousands of lawyers in a large number... more
In the global legal services market, China has some of the youngest law firms but also some of the largest. In the early 21st century, several Chinese law firms have grown into mega law firms, with thousands of lawyers in a large number of domestic and overseas offices. This study uses the case of Chinese law firms to develop an ecological theory of organizational growth following the Chicago school of sociology. The authors argue that firms coexist and interact in an ecology consisting of other firms in the same industry. These firms occupy different ecological positions and generate various processes of interaction with one another. In their organizational growth, four species of Chinese law firms (global generalists, elite boutiques, local coalitions, and space rentals) have engaged in a variety of ecological processes, including competition, symbiosis, accommodation, assimilation, purification, and proletarianization. By locating firms in a social space and investigating the spatial and processual patterns of their growth, this ecological theory presents not only a system of social classification but also a logic of temporal change through social interaction.
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Globalization is rapidly changing the landscape of law practice in China, especially its corporate legal sector. This article reports on the preliminary findings of the China research of the Globalization, Lawyers, and Emerging Economies... more
Globalization is rapidly changing the landscape of law practice in China, especially its corporate legal sector. This article reports on the preliminary findings of the China research of the Globalization, Lawyers, and Emerging Economies (GLEE) Project—a comparative study that examines how globalization is reshaping the market for legal services in important emerging economies and how these developments are contributing to the transformation of the political economy in these countries and beyond. Adopting an ecological approach, which examines how different segments of the legal system interact with one another in complex ways, this article maps the corporate core, international linkages, and domestic contexts of China's globalizing corporate legal sector and discusses its impact on lawyers and society.
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This article offers a theoretical comparison between field and ecology, as developed by Pierre Bourdieu and the Chicago School of sociology. While field theory and ecological theory share similar conceptualizations of actors, positions,... more
This article offers a theoretical comparison between field and ecology, as developed by Pierre Bourdieu and the Chicago School of sociology. While field theory and ecological theory share similar conceptualizations of actors, positions, and relations, and while they converge in their views on structural isomorphism, temporality, and social psychology, they are quite different on several other scores: power and inequality, endogeneity, heterogeneity, metaphorical sources, and abstraction. With a fine-grained comparison of the two approaches, this article provides the basis for a continuous dialogue among social theorists and empirical researchers regarding the nature of social space, its structural and processual composition, and how it changes over time.
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This article traces the three waves of law and social science studies in contemporary China and examines the current status of this rapidly differentiating interdisciplinary field. While the first two waves of studies subsided without... more
This article traces the three waves of law and social science studies in contemporary China and examines the current status of this rapidly differentiating interdisciplinary field. While the first two waves of studies subsided without generating a nationwide law and society movement, the most recent wave is changing the landscape of the Chinese legal academia through empirical research. Four emerging subareas of Chinese sociolegal studies are reviewed in detail: (1) law in rural society, (2) legal profession, (3) courts and dispute resolution, and (4) criminal justice.
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Research on the public image of lawyers often focuses on lawyers’ role as advocates and neglects other representations. Based on the content analysis of 669 media reports of Chinese criminal cases between 1979 and 2009, this article... more
Research on the public image of lawyers often focuses on lawyers’ role as advocates and neglects other representations. Based on the content analysis of 669 media reports of Chinese criminal cases between 1979 and 2009, this article provides a typology of lawyers’ media images: as advocates, as experts and as suspects. Even when lawyers are characterized as defenders of suspects, media depictions of their roles are vacuous and lawyers may be considered unnecessary and dispensable. Furthermore, the characterization of lawyers in the case stories has a binary quality that is contingent upon the media's substantive judgment of case outcomes. With findings from the Chinese case, the article calls for more attention to lawyers’ images in the media, both in China and in comparative research on the legal profession.
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Since the law and society movement in the 1960s, the sociology of law in the United States has been dominated by a power/inequality approach. Based on a sociological distinction between the forms and substances of law, this article... more
Since the law and society movement in the 1960s, the sociology of law in the United States has been dominated by a power/inequality approach. Based on a sociological distinction between the forms and substances of law, this article outlines a “powerless” approach to the sociology of law as a theoretical alternative to the mainstream power/inequality approach. Following Simmel and the Chicago School of sociology, this new approach analyzes the legal system not by its power relations and patterns of inequality, but by its social forms, or the structures and processes that constitute the legal system's spatial outlook and temporality. Taking a radical stance on power, this article is not only a retrospective call for social theory in law and society research, but also a progressive effort to move beyond US-centric sociolegal scholarship and to develop new social science tools that explain a larger variety of legal phenomena across the world.
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This article develops a processual theory of boundary work and exchange for understanding the emergence and transformation of social structures such as professions and their state regulatory regimes. It argues that social boundaries are... more
This article develops a processual theory of boundary work and exchange for understanding the emergence and transformation of social structures such as professions and their state regulatory regimes. It argues that social boundaries are often ambiguous and elastic areas, and their social construction involves multiple forms of boundary work (boundary making, boundary blurring, and boundary maintenance) as well as the process of exchange that integrates them. Based upon 256 in-depth interviews with law practitioners and public officials in twelve provinces of China, 3 years of ethnographic work on a professional Internet forum, and archival research, the study employs the theory of boundary work and exchange to explain the creation, differentiation, and fragmentation of legal professions in three decades of China's economic reform (1979 to 2009).
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This article uses the case of Chinese migrant lawyers to examine how the spatial mobility of individual practitioners shapes the social structure of the profession. Drawing on data from 261 interviews conducted in twelve Chinese provinces... more
This article uses the case of Chinese migrant lawyers to examine how the spatial mobility of individual practitioners shapes the social structure of the profession. Drawing on data from 261 interviews conducted in twelve Chinese provinces during 2004–2010, the 2009 Chinese Legal Environment Survey, lawyer yearbooks, and other public sources, the authors examine the patterns, causes, outcomes, and structural consequences of Chinese lawyers' internal migration. The empirical analysis shows that the spatial mobility of Chinese lawyers has not only increased the stratification and inequality of law practice in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, but it has also aggravated the shortage of legal service and intensified interprofessional competition in western and rural China. Based on findings from the Chinese case, the article connects the sociology of law and migration studies and moves toward a new processual theory for understanding the relationship between microlevel mobility and macrolevel stratification in the legal profession.
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This article proposes a processual theory of the legal profession. In contrast to the structural, interactional, and collective action approaches, this processual theory conceptualizes the legal profession as a social process that changes... more
This article proposes a processual theory of the legal profession. In contrast to the structural, interactional, and collective action approaches, this processual theory conceptualizes the legal profession as a social process that changes over space and time. The social process of the legal profession includes four components: (1) diagnostic struggles over professional expertise; (2) boundary work over professional jurisdictions; (3) migration across geographical areas and status hierarchies; and (4) exchange between professions and the state. Building on the processual theory and using China as a primary example, the author proposes a research agenda for studying lawyers and globalization that seeks to shift the focus of research from the legal elite to ordinary law practitioners, from global law firms to local law firms, and from advanced economies to emerging economies.
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This is a commentary on the book, "Opposing the Rule of Law" by Nick Cheesman (my commentary is the second piece).