Research Interests

• Law and Society
• Law and Development
• Chinese Legal Systems

Selected Articles

Recent Publications

1. “Street as Courtroom: State Accommodation of Labor Protests in South China,” coauthored with Yang Su, Law & Society Review, Vol. 44, no.1, 2010 forthcoming. 
   
2. “Enforcing Commercial Judgments in the Pearl River Delta of China,” American Journal of Comparative Law, Vol. 59, no.2, 419-56, 2009.
   
3. “Court Finance and Court Reactions to Judicial Reforms: A Tale of Two Chinese Courts,” Law & Policy , Vol. 31, No. 4, 463-486, 2009.
   
4. “Routinization of Divorce Law Practice in China: How Institutional Constraints Influence Judicial Behavior,” International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family, lead article, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1-27, 2009.
   
5. “Dispute Resolution in China,” co-authored with Randall Peerenboom, East Asia Law Review, lead article, Vol. 4, 1-61, 2009.
   
6. “Why Do They not Take the Disputes? Law, Power, Politics in the Decision-Making of Chinese Courts,” International Journal of Law in Context, Vol. 3, No. 3, 203-25, 2007.
   
7. “Recent Decline in Chinese Economic Caseload: Exploration of a Surprising Puzzle,” The China Quarterly, Vol. 190, 352-74, June 2007.
   
8. “Why Do They Not Comply with the Law? Illegality and Semi-Illegality among Rural-Urban Migrant Entrepreneurs in Beijing,” Law & Society Review Vol. 39, No. 3, 527-62, 2005.
   
9. “Administrative Law as a Political Control Mechanism in Contemporary China,” in Stephanie Balme & Michael Dowdle eds., Building Constitutionalism in China, Palgrave Macmillian, 143-161, 2009.
10. “Debt-Collection in the Less Developed Regions of China: An Empirical Study from a Basic-Level Court in Shaanxi Province,” The China Quarterly, 2010, forthcoming.

Research Projects

• Principal Investigator, “State Channeling of Labor Conflict in China,” HK$684,000, graded a full score of 5, General Research Fund(GRF), Hong Kong Government, 2009.
• Principal Investigator: Enforcing Contract Judgments in China, General Research Fund(GRF), Hong Kong Government, 2008.

Awards and Honors

• Global Law Faculty, NYU Law School, appointed as of March 2008.