Fan Yafeng: The Legal Scholar Who Lost His Job Due to Politics

• Author: China Law Digest compiled news

Fan Yafeng, Peking University LL.M ’95, Graduate School at China Academy of Social Sciences, S.J.D ’03, was a former teacher at Beijing Institute of Education and previously an associate researcher at CASS Institute of Law. He was fired on November 3 for “political” reasons.

Fan is a legal figure who is a combination of scholar, religious figure, and rights-protection lawyer in the process of China’s social transition. For Fan, the relationship of the three is this: the practical purpose of legal studies is to push for transition, rights protection will promote transition, and, in the future, the leading force in social transition will be civil organizations such as family churches.

Academically, Fan’s interests are constitutional law, political philosophy, social theories, Confucianism, and theology. He has written books such as Elementary Discussions on Liberalism and Confucian Tradition, The Growth of Liberalism in English Constitutional Politics, and The Rationality of Procedure, and many essays on politics and current affairs. He has held many legal lectures, translated foreign legal texts (published by People’s Press of Guizhou and Peking University Press), and led the famous website Public Law Review (www.gongfa.com).

In the rights protection field, Fan was active in the 2004 Du Daobin Case. Also in 2004, he started a discussion group that suggested changes to improve the human rights protection clause, fully participating in the Taishi Village Impeachment Case. Other than that, he has helped farmers organize farmers’ organizations as well...