Free Online Seminar: Law, Justice and Human Rights in China
Hosted on Zoom – register for link
September 16 – November 18, 2020
Every Wednesday, 2:00-4:00pm Eastern Time
This series will introduce the legal system of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – in practice as well as theory – with an emphasis on institutions, norms, procedures, personnel and ideology relating to constitutional law, criminal justice and human rights.
Professor Cohen is a recently-retired NYU law professor, Faculty Director Emeritus of its US-Asia Law Institute and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Teng Biao is an academic lawyer, currently Grove Human Rights Scholar at Hunter College, CUNY, and formerly a lecturer at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing.
Katherine Wilhelm is. the Executive Director of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at NYU Law School, and was previously the legal program officer for the Ford Foundation’s Beijing office.
September 16: Pre-Communist History
September 23: Establishing a Chinese Communist State
September 30: The Party State
October 7: The Range of Police-Imposed Punishments
October 14: Torture, Evidence, and the Death Penalty
October 21: Lawyers and the Rights Defense Movement
October 28: What is a Chinese “Court”?
November 4: Legal Education, Training, Research and Publications
November 11: Taiwan’s Criminal Justice and Democratization
November 18: The Future
Week 10 Reading for November 18, 2020
Jerome A. Cohen, “Will China’s New National Security Law Be the ‘Anti-Virus’ Software That Locks Down Hong Kong?” The Diplomat.
Jerome A. Cohen, series of posts at Jerry’s Blog:
· “Updates on the case of the Hong Kong 12,” October 1, 2020
· “More about the prosecution of the Hong Kong 12,” October 9, 2020
· “Recent Hong Kong Developments,” October 29, 2020
· “The Latest from Grenville Cross on the HK 12,” October 31, 2020
· “Seven Acquitted of ‘Rioting’ Charges in Hong Kong,” November 2, 2020
Donald Clarke, Hong Kong’s National Security Law: An Assessment, China Leadership Monitor, July 13, 2020
Optional Reading:
Victoria Tin-bor Hui, “Today’s Macau, Tomorrow’s Hong Kong: What Future for ‘One Country, Two Systems,’ ” in Between Politics and Finance: Hong Kong’s “Infinity War,” edited by Alessia Amighini, Italian Institute for Political Studies, May 18, 2020, pp. 59-79.
Week Nine Reading for November 11, 2020
Yu-Jie Chen and Jerome A Cohen, Freedom from Arbitrary Detention in Asia: Lessons from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, Oxford Handbook of Constitutional Law in Asia, 2018 (Edited by Michel Rosenfeld and András Sajó).
Margaret K. Lewis, Forging Taiwan’s Legal Identity, 44 Brook. J. Int’l L. 489 (2019).
Optional reading:
Week Eight Reading for November 4, 2020
Carl F. Minzner, The Rise and Fall of Chinese Legal Education, Fordham International Law Journal, vol. 36 issue 2 (2013).
Pamela N. Phan, Clinical Legal Education in China: In Pursuit of a Culture of Law and a Mission of Social Justice, Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, vol. 8 p. 117 (2005).
Optional Reading:
Scholars at Risk, Obstacles to Excellence: Academic Freedom and China’s Quest for World-Class Universities, 2019.
Week Seven Reading for October 28, 2020
Luoyang City “Seed” Case Highlights Chinese Courts’ Lack of Authority to Declare Laws Invalid, China Law and Governance Review, No. 2 (June 2004).
Finder, Susan, China’s Translucent Judicial Transparency (October 18, 2018) from Transparency Challenges Facing China (2018); Peking University School of Transnational Law Research Paper. Available at SSRN.
Optional Reading:
Li Ling, “Corruption in China’s Courts,” from Judicial Independence in China: Lessons for Global Rule of Law Promotion, Randall Peerenboom ed. (2010) pp 196-220.
Lena Y. Zhong and Mengliang Dai, The Politics of Wrongful Convictions in China.
Week Six Reading for October 21, 2020
Teng Biao, The Rights Defense and New Citizens’ Movement, Handbook on Human Rights in China, Sarah Biddulph (ed.), Chap. 28, Edward Edgar publishing, 2019.
Hualing Fu, Han Zhu, After the July 9 (709) Crackdown: The Future of Human Rights Lawyering.
Optional:
Eva Pils, From Independent Lawyer Groups to Civic Opposition: The Case of China’s New Citizen Movement
Sida, LIU, Ching-fang , HSU, Terence C., HALLIDAY, Law as a Sword, Law as a Shield: Politically Liberal Lawyers and the Rule of Law.
Week Five Reading for October 14, 2020
PowerPoint Slides by Teng Biao
Margaret Lewis, “Freedom from torture,” Handbook on Human Rights in China, Sarah Biddulph (ed.), Chap. 17, Edward Edgar Publishing, 2019.
Guo Zhiyuan, “Torture and Exclusion of Evidence in China,” China Perspectives, 2019-1.
Teng Biao, “The Politics of the Death Penalty,” China Change, Jan. 16, 2014.
Optional reading:
Amnesty International, “No End In Sight: Torture and Forced Confessions in China,” 2015.
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Week Four Reading for October 7, 2020
Yu-Jie Chen and Jerome A. Cohen, “Freedom from Arbitrary Detention in Asia: Lessons from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong,” Oxford Handbook of Constitutional Law in Asia (David Law, Holning Lau and Alex Schwartz eds., Oxford, Forthcoming).
Sarah Biddulph, Arbitrary Detention, Hand Book on Human Rights in China, Sarah Biddulph (ed.), Chap. 18, Edward Edgar publishing, 2019.
Teng Biao: Residential surveillance at a designated location(RSDL): atrocity under the name of law, foreword to the People’s Republic of the Disappeared, Safeguard Defenders; November 2017
UHRP: The Mass Internment of Uyghurs, 2018
Jamie P. Horsley, What’s so controversial about China’s new anti-corruption body?, Brookings, May 2018.
Optional reading:
Jerome A. Cohen and Yu-Jie Chen, Beijing must come clean on arbitrary detention of Taiwanese or risk hurting its soft power ambitions, SCMP, March 26, 2020.
Week Three Reading for September 30, 2020
Week 3 PowerPoint Slides by Teng Biao
Fu Hualing, Duality and China’s Struggle for Legal Autonomy
Nis Grünberg, Katja Drinhausen, The Party leads on everything: China’s changing governance in Xi Jinping’s new era
Optional reading:
Ling Li, Rule of Law in a Party-State: A Conceptual Interpretive Framework of the Constitutional Reality of China, Asian Journal of Law and Society, 2 (2015), pp. 93–113
Stein Ringen, The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st Century Paperback, Hong Kong University Press; 2016. （pp1-44）
Week Two Reading for September 23, 2020
The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (2018 version)
Susan V. Lawrence and Michael F. Martin, Understanding China’s Political System (Congressional Research Service 13/3/20).
Zhang Qianfan, The Constitution of China: A Contextual Analysis (Hart Publishing, 2012): 39-59.
Teng Biao, Has Xi Jinping Changed China? Not Really
Optional reading:
Huang Lie, “Constitutionalism and China,” in Constitutionalism and China, Li Buyun ed. (Law Press China, 2006): 1-36.
Week One Reading for September 16, 2020
Zha Jianying, “China’s Heart of Darkness: Prince Han Fei and Chairman Xi Jinping”
Optional reading:
Ch’ü T’ung-tsu [Qu Tongzu], Law and Society in Traditional China (1965): 267-279.
Jianfu Chen, Chinese Law: Context and Transformation (Martinus Nijhoff Press, 2008): 23-38.
Jérôme Bourgon, “The Principle of Legality and Legal Rules in the Chinese Legal Tradition,” in Mireille Delmas-Marty and Pierre-Étienne Will (ed.), China, Democracy, and Law: A Historical and Contemporary Approach (Leiden: Brill 2012): 169-188.
Donald C. Clarke, “Puzzling Observations in Chinese Law: When Is a Riddle Just a Mistake?”
For more information, please visit: https://event.newschool.edu/lawjusticeandhumanrights