Law-Oriented Lawyering vs Political Lawyering: A Comparative Study of China, Taiwan and South Korea
Year: 2018
Type: preprint
Abstract: In contemporary China as well as authoritarian Taiwan and South Korea, lawyers’ rights advocacy has constituted an important part of bottom-up social endeavours to liberate and democratise the law and political system. The transitional stories of Taiwan and South Korea are often referred to as the paradigm cases of lawyer-led liberal transformation. However, this article challenges this theory and argues that due to the different types of constitutional and legal systems, rights lawyering in China has taken a journey opposite from its counterparts in Taiwan and South Korea. This comparative study identifies prominent structural and legal factors embedded in China’s party-state system that prevent the escalation of rights lawyering to a higher level of mobilisation and politicisation in the country. Nevertheless, the legal development without democratic input in China unexpectedly made rights lawyers the pioneering entrepreneurs of social campaigns. Compared to other civic groups, Chinese rights lawyers are better equipped with unique features of their profession which enable them to remain pivotal agents in rights causes.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Author: Han Zhu
Institution: University of Hong Kong
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3136673432