With or Without You: Qing, Li, Fa, and Legal Pluralism in China

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 88-118
Author(s):  
Qian Liu
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Urban China ◽  
Legal Mobilization ◽  
Law And Society ◽  
State Law ◽  
Rural Villages ◽  
Chinese Law ◽  
Legal Transplantation

Abstract The concept of legal pluralism was introduced to China in the mid-1990s to address the conflict between state law and local norms and customs. More than two decades after its introduction, the scope of legal pluralism in China has shifted to the coexistence and interaction between state law and nonstate orders. In this article, I review theoretical discussions and empirical studies on legal pluralism in China. The existing studies on legal pluralism focus mostly on rural villages, which marginalizes the lived experience of urban residents who are also caught in China’s rapid legal transplantation in recent decades. At the same time, law and society scholars who study labor dispute resolution in urban China tend to frame the questions as legal mobilization, rather than legal pluralism. The term qingli 情理[commonsense feelings of justice] is a common theme underlying the scholarship of legal pluralism and legal mobilization in China, and thus it has the potential to bring them together and bridge the findings of the two bodies of scholarship. This article contributes to the literature on Chinese law and society by demonstrating the role that qingli plays in bridging different areas of sociolegal studies.

Laws in Conflict: Legacies of War, Gender, and Legal Pluralism in Chechnya

2019 ◽  
Vol 71 (04) ◽  
pp. 667-709 ◽  
Author(s):  
Egor Lazarev
Keyword(s):  
Gender Gap ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
State Building ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Legal Mobilization ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
State Law ◽  
Gender Hierarchies ◽  
And Behavior

AbstractHow do legacies of conflict affect choices between state and nonstate legal institutions? This article studies this question in Chechnya, where state law coexists with Sharia and customary law. The author focuses on the effect of conflict-induced disruption of gender hierarchies because the dominant interpretations of religious and customary norms are discriminatory against women. The author finds that women in Chechnya are more likely than men to rely on state law and that this gender gap in legal preferences and behavior is especially large in more-victimized communities. The author infers from this finding that the conflict created the conditions for women in Chechnya to pursue their interests through state law—albeit not without resistance. Women’s legal mobilization has generated a backlash from the Chechen government, which has attempted to reinstate a patriarchal order. The author concludes that conflict may induce legal mobilization among the weak and that gender may become a central cleavage during state-building processes in postconflict environments.

scholarly journals Beyond Relativism: Where Is Political Power in Legal Pluralism?

2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gad Barzilai
Keyword(s):  
Political Power ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Law And Society ◽  
Nation State ◽  
State Law ◽  
Dynamic Interactions ◽  
Nation States

Both decentralization of state law and cultural relativism have been fundamentally embedded in legal pluralism. As a scholarly trend in law and society, it has insightfully challenged the underpinnings of analytical positivist jurisprudence. Nevertheless, a theoretical concept of political power has significantly been missing in research on the plurality of legal practices in various jurisdictions. This Article aims to critically offer a theoretical concept of political power that takes legal decentralization and cultural relativism seriously and yet points to how and where we should look into political power, assuming that legal pluralism itself may be a strategy of elites and nation-states amid globalization. First, the Article explores the contributions of legal pluralism, and its limits, in intellectually revolting against analytical positivist jurisprudence. Second, it explicates why a concept of political power has been missing, and why such a concept is required for better comprehension of legal pluralism. Third, it calls for a look into three sites of political power in the praxis of legal pluralism: politics of identities, non-ruling communities, and neo-liberal globalization. Last, the Article constructs a concept of political-legal transformations that enables us to unveil political power in the context of de-centralized legal pluralities. Power is produced in, resides in and is generated in the dynamic interactions between nation-states, localities and global agents. Transformative relations along these dimensions allow the nation-state to forfeit some elements of power, both in economics and in law, but they also enable it to maintain some essential ingredients of political power that are often veiled in the rhetoric of globalized pluralism.

Ahmad Ibrahim Memorial Lecture; GLOBALIZATION, SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY, LEGAL PLURALISM: CAN STATE LAW SURVIVE?

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon R Woodman
Keyword(s):  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Memorial Lecture ◽  
State Law ◽  
Small Measure ◽  
Education Association ◽  
Deep Thought

It is a great honour to be invited to give this 8th Ahmad Ibrahim Memorial Lecture. I met Ahmad Ibrahim several times during his period as founding Dean of the Kulliyyah of Laws of the International Islamic University Malaysia, when we both attended conferences of the Commonwealth Legal Education Association in Cumberland Lodge, Windsor, Britain. He was immensely respected in the field of legal education in the Commonwealth; his interventions in our discussions were fewer than those of some colleagues, who liked to talk at lenght on every occassion and about every topic, but when he made comments they were always efective, being evidently based on long experience and deep thought. I have since read some of his work and learnt from it - as will appear , in small measure, from some references i make later in this lecture.

scholarly journals LOOKING FOR QUALITY: THE EMPIRICAL DEBATE IN ACCESS TO JUSTICE RESEARCH

2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer A Leitch
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Law And Society ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Justice Research ◽  
Conceptual Debate ◽  
Il Y A ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Impact

Access to Justice remains one of the most contested issues on the law-and-society agenda.  There has been continuing conceptual debate over its meaning, its objectives, and its success.  Of late, attention has turned to efforts to measure the impact and efficacy of different initiatives aimed at improving individuals’ access to justice.  Along with a broader turn toward empirical studies in law, there have been renewed efforts within the access to justice field to develop a more compelling and convincing methodology by which to assess and evaluate these different initiatives. L’accès à la justice demeure l’une des questions les plus contestées à l’ordre du jour « droit et société ». Il y a un débat conceptuel continu au sujet de son sens, de ses objectifs et de son succès. Récemment, l’attention s’est tournée vers les efforts visant à mesurer l’impact et l’efficacité de différentes initiatives ayant pour but d’améliorer l’accès à la justice des particuliers. Outre une tendance plus générale vers des études empiriques en droit, il y a eu, dans le domaine de l’accès à la justice, des efforts renouvelés visant à élaborer une méthodologie plus contraignante et convaincante pour évaluer ces différentes initiatives.

scholarly journals EKSISTENSI OTONOMI DESA PAKRAMAN DALAM PERSPEKTIF PLURALISME HUKUM

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anak Agung Istri Ari Atu Dewi
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
State Law ◽  
Legal Research ◽  
Local Regulation ◽  
Traditional Institution ◽  
The Republic

The purpose of this research is to discover the existence of autonomy of Desa Pakraman in legal pluralism perspective. Related with that purpose, there are two issues that will be discussed, first, how does the existence of the autonomy of Desa Pakraman in Indonesia’s legal system?,Second, how does the existence of the autonomy of Desa Pakraman in legal pluralism perspective?. The research method is normative legal research using statue approach, concept approach and analytical approach and law analysis by using legal interpretation. Based on the problems, the results of discussion are : first, the existence of the autonomy of Desa Pakraman within the Indonesia’s legal system has regulated in the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia, national and local Regulations. In the Constitution, specifically Article 18 B of paragraph (2), declare that the states recognizes Desa Pakraman and their traditional rights. In regulation of Law No.5 of 1960 concerning basic Agrarian Law (UUPA), regulation of Human Rights, and regulation of Desa (Village) are clearly recognize Desa Pakraman as traditional institution has traditional rights, one of it is the autonomy of Desa Pakraman. At the local regulation, autonomy Desa Pakraman has regulated in Local Regulation about Desa Pakraman. Second, that existence of autonomy Desa Pakraman in perspective legal pluralism is that the existence autonomy Desa Pakraman is a weak legal pluralism. In perspective weak legal pluralism the state law as a superior and the customary law as an inferior, its position in the hierarchy under State law. As a theory, the semi-autonomous social field from Sally Falk Moore perspectives that Desa Pakraman is semi-autonomous. Desa Pakraman has capacity to hold their village based on the customary law and outomaticly Desa Pakraman to be in framework of state law.

scholarly journals Land Consolidation in Rural China: Life Satisfaction among Resettlers and Its Determinants

Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 118
Author(s):  
Weiming Tong ◽  
Kevin Lo ◽  
Pingyu Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Rural China ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Land Consolidation ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Rural Villages ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Rural Dwellers

The Chinese government has pursued rural land consolidation under the Building New Rural Communities (BNRC) initiative. The consolidation projects aim to address the hollowing village problem, improve the living standards of rural dwellers, and promote urban-rural integration. Rural villages with small populations and poor infrastructure are merged into a centralized rural community, and their inhabitants are resettled. The newly vacated buildings are then converted to agriculture land, which allows cities to expand under the “no net loss” land-use policy. Despite the significance of the initiative, both in terms of the scale of operation and the impacts on the affected households, there are few empirical studies that scrutinize this form of rural restructuring. Drawing on data collected via surveys and interviews, this paper examines the processes of land consolidation and its impacts on villagers. From a development-as-modernization perspective, we outline three main processes of land consolidation: village mergers and resettlement, land circulation to rural cooperatives, and rural industrial development. Overall, the effects of land consolidation on the livelihood of resettled villagers are positive. This system generally improves housing and living conditions through increased levels of off-farm employment and income, but there are a number of barriers that may hinder a villager’s ability to find different employment. Housing and neighborhood characteristics have significant effects on the life satisfaction of villagers.

Navigating Diffuse Jurisdictions

2019 ◽  
pp. 98-120
Author(s):  
Helen Quane
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
State Law ◽  
System P ◽  
The Status ◽  
Over Time

This chapter studies the jurisdictional boundaries between state and non-state law with specific reference to religious, or customary, law. The determination of these regulatory forms as state law depends on the extent to which they perform prescriptive, adjudicative, or enforcement functions. Indeed, the boundaries between state and non-state law are not as stable as they may appear, as they are liable to shift according to circumstances and over time. The chapter then argues that the issue of classification acquires resonance in cases where legal pluralism occurs as the character and scope of a state’s exercise of jurisdiction becomes far more ambiguous in such situations. This can create uncertainty about the jurisdiction of the respective systems, the status of norms from one system that are given effect in another, and how these norms should be interpreted and applied given their concurrent existence within more than one legal system.

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