This volume addresses several core questions regarding the nature of law in China and its future development. In particular, these articles shed light on whether the rule of law ideal is commensurable with government based on the Chinese Communist Party. Beginning virtually from scratch, China has established a comprehensive legal system that boasts a constitution, primary and secondary legislation and plentiful regulations covering most areas of public and private life. Yet, as these articles discuss, its courts are enmeshed in Party and state hierarchies and are not empowered to directly...

Over the past half century, western democracies have lead efforts to entrench the economic and political values of liberal democracy into the foundations of European and international public order. As this book details, the relationship between the media and the state has been at the heart of those efforts. In that relationship, often framed in constitutional principles, the liberal democratic state has celebrated the liberty to publish information and entertainment content, while also forcefully setting the limits for harmful or offensive expression. It is thus a relationship rooted in the...

This volume concerns the rights and obligations of the individual in three critically important contexts: employment relations, family relations and the ownership of immovable property. The development of these legal institutions has helped to transform economic and social relations in contemporary China. In this volume, the articles illustrate firstly a shift away from close state control towards greater freedom for enterprises to use human and natural resources to achieve economic growth and for citizens to pursue their personal lives. More recently, the government has responded to public...