Chinese jurists' misconceptions of critical legal studies

• Author: XIONG Bingwan
• Pages: 310-332

FRONTIERS OF LAW IN CHINA

VOL. 12 JUNE 2017 NO. 2

DOI 10.3868/s050-006-017-0016-4

ARTICLE

CHINESE JURISTS’ MISCONCEPTIONS OF CRITICAL LEGAL STUDIES

XIONG Bingwan∗

Abstract Critical Legal Scholarship was first introduced to Chinese legal academia in

late 1980’s, and gained great attentions in the following decade. Later on, however,

Chinese jurists showed little interest in exploring more of Critical Legal Scholarship

because of their oversimplification of Critical Legal Scholars as indeterminists,

deconstructionists, extremists and nihilists. This article points out the typical, gross

misconceptions of Chinese jurists to Critical Legal Scholarship, and explores the reasons

of such misconceptions. The author of this article hopes that his representation of

Critical Legal Scholarship would help to reopen the door for further communications

between the Critical Legal Scholarship and their audiences in China. Remarks on how to

approach Critical Legal Scholarship further from a Chinese perspective are provided at

the end of this article.

Keywords Critical Legal Studies, determinacy, political preference, rule of Law

INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................................311

I. DETERMINACY, OBJECTIVITY AND NEUTRALITY OF THE LAW I N ADJUDICATION.... 313

A. Chinese Jurists’ Reading of Critical Legal Scholars’ Claim of

Determinacy........................................................................................................ 313

∗ (熊丙万) Ph.D. in Private Law, School of Law, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China; L.L.M.,

Harvard Law School, Cambridge, USA; Assistant Professor, School of Law, Renmin University of China;

Senior Research Fellow, Center for Civil and Commercial Law Studies, Renmin University of China, Beijing

100872, China. Contact: bxiong@ruc.edu.cn

This article is an extension of my presentation at Renmin University International Virtual Workshop in

Mar. 2014, which weighed in on Professor Duncan Kennedy’s thoughts on the globalizations of law and legal

thoughts (see GUO Rui & HU Xiaoqian, Duncan Kennedy’s Three Globalizations in Theory and in Practice:

A Chinese Perspective, 9(4) Frontiers of Law in China, 536–559 (2014); HU Xiaoqian, Encounter: How

Duncan Kennedy and Chinese Legal Scholars View Legal Transplants and the Rule of Law

—

A

Commentary on the Harvard–Renmin Virtual Workshop on Duncan Kennedy’s Three Globalization and Legal

Thought, 9(4) Frontiers of Law in China, 560–581 (2014)). I am grateful to Professors Duncan Kennedy,

Joseph Singer, Henry Smith and Mark WU for the illuminating talks at Harvard Law School. The comments

from Professors Bill Alford, Duncan Kennedy, Joseph Singer, ZHU Jingwen, GUO Rui, Charles Wharton,

ZHU Mingzhe, YAN Tian, WANG Linghao and ZUO Zhenbin are also appreciated. I also thank Renmin

University Research Funds on WTO DSB’s Interpretative Methods (Project No. 15XNB001) and Moral

Conception and Social Welfare in National Legislation (Project No. 15XNF004), and Renmin-Geneva

Seeding Funds (Project No. 16XNQ021) and Research Project Funded by Notional Social Science

Foundation of China (Project No. 14CFX006) for generous supports in the writing of this article.

2017] CHINESE JURISTS’ MISCONCEPTIONS OF CRITICAL LEGAL STUDIES 311

B. Critical Legal Scholarship and Its Target........................................................... 314

C. Good Faith, Bad Faith and Self-Unconscious Judges........................................ 316

II. DECONSTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF THE IDEAL OF RULE OF LAW ......... 319

A. The Charges of Deconstructionism and Nihilism.............................................. 319

B. The Problem of Dichotomies............................................................................. 321

C. The New Vision of Rule of Law ......................................................................... 322

III. DE-POLITICIZATION AND RE-POLITICIZATION OF THE JUDICIARY ........................ 324

IV. TWO CONCEPTS OF POLITICS: THE REASONS OF CHINESE JURISTS’

MISCONCEPTIONS ................................................................................................. 327

CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................ 330

INTRODUCTION

Everyone is confused about what Critical Legal Scholars mean when we say that law

or rights or legal theory is indeterminate.

—

Joseph William Singer1

Critical Legal Scholarship was first introduced to Chinese legal academia in 1987,2

and gained great attentions in the following decade.3 Later on, however, Chinese jurists

showed little interest in exploring more of Critical Legal Scholarship probably because of

their oversimplification of Critical Legal Scholars as indeterminist, deconstructionist and

extremist.4 Such a reading of Critical Legal Studies not only disagrees with the Chinese

colleagues’ strong expectation of social certainty and urgent pursuit of rule of law after

drastic social changes in nearly half a century, but also contradicts, to some degree, their

intuitive feelings about real courtroom operations.

It is indeed Critical Legal Scholars’ common belief that law is not apolitical and

objective. Rather, according to Critical Legal Scholars, lawyers, judges, and legal

1 Joseph William Singer, The Player and the Cards: Nihilism and Legal Theory, 94 Yale Law Journal, 10

(1984).

2 XIN Chunying, 异军突起的美国批判法学 (The Emerging School of Critical Legal Studies in the U.S.),

1 法学研究 (Chinese Journal of Law), 82 (1987).

3 SHEN Zongling, 批判法学在美国的兴起 (The Rising of Critical Legal Studies in the U.S.), 2 比较法研

究 (Journal of Comparative Law), 1 (1989); ZHU Jingwen, 对传统法律 观的挑战——美国批判法律研究与中国

法学理论更新的比较 (Challenges to Conventional Notion of Law: A Comparison between Critical Legal

Studies in the U.S. and the Innovation of Legal Theories in China), 2 比较法研究 (Journal of Comparative

Law), 1 (1989); WU Yuzhang, 批判法学评析 (Comments on Critical Legal Studies), 2 中国社会科学 (China

Social Science), 141 (1992); ZHU Jingwen, 对西方法律传统的挑战——评美国批判法律研究运动 (Challenges

to Western Legal Traditions: Remarks on the Critical Legal Studies Movements in the U.S.), 4 中国法学

(China Legal Science), 115 (1995).

4 The most recent writing is a book review of Duncan Kennedy’s a Critique of Adjudication, See YU

Xingzhong, 基本矛盾、虚假的必然性与司法裁决的意识形态性质——邓肯·肯尼迪的司法裁决批判简评 (Basic

Contradiction, False Necessity and the Ideological Nature of Adjudication: A Brief Comment on Duncan

Kennedy’s a Critique of Adjudication), 4 比较法研究 (Journal of Comparative Law), 142 (2010).