China's traditional system of dispute resolution and maintenance of order in society has been treated by Western scholars as legal history, but because the Chinese system is radically different from European systems in its conceptual structure and therefore does not fit into the familiar categories and models of Western law and jurisprudence, such treatment has been inadequate and often misleading. In Order and Discipline in China, Thomas B. Stephens provides a new approach, methodology, and theoretical framework for the interpretation of traditional Chinese "law."

Stephens...