GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Document Type

Book Part

Publication Date

2023

Status

Accepted

Abstract

This chapter examines the relationship between China’s legal system and its political system in the Xi Jinping era. It locates legal institutions within the broader political system and looks at two important Xi-era reforms--the establishment of Supervisory Commissions and efforts to professionalize the judiciary. Addressing in particular the questions of whether there is a meaningful line between the legal and the political and whether China has, in the words of Carl Minzner, “turned against law,” it concludes that the Party is significantly downgrading, and perhaps abandoning, any effort to maintain a distinction between politics and law and between the Party and the state. The Xi administration has doubled down on and affirmed the absolute primacy of politics and the Party over legal institutions and legal standards.

This chapter has been published as “Law and the Political System in Xi Jinping's China,” in Daniel Lynch & Stanley Rosen (ed.), Chinese Politics: The Xi Jinping Difference (Routledge 2024): 17-43.

GW Paper Series

2024-57

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