Sida Liu
Sessions
The legal profession in China is increasingly embracing technology. Since the 2010s, a new type of law firm, commonly known as “internet-promoted firms” (IPFs), has emerged as a significant force, particularly in areas such as debt collection, personal injury, and labor disputes. These IPFs typically collaborate with online platforms and legal consulting companies, entities that are not regulated by the bar association or the justice bureau, to market their services through search engines like Baidu and popular apps such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu. The lack of stringent regulation on these practices has led to problems such as unfulfilled promises to clients, fraudulent or exaggerated credentials, and irresponsible representations. Furthermore, the rise of IPFs has considerably driven down the prices of individual legal services, eliciting numerous complaints from traditional law firms. This trend has also depressed the salaries of early-career lawyers and exacerbated their already challenging working conditions.
Drawing on insights from sociology and new institutional economics, Extralegal Governance provides the first comprehensive account of China's illegal markets by applying a socio-economic approach. It considers social legitimacy and state repression in examining the nature of illegal markets. It examines how power dynamics and varying levels of punishment shape exchange relationships between buyers and sellers. It identifies context-specific risks and explains how private individuals and organizations address these risks by developing extralegal governance institutions to facilitate social cooperation across various illegal markets. Adopting a multiple-case study design to sample China's illegal markets, this book utilizes four cases - street vending, small-property-rights housing, corrupt exchanges, and online loan sharks - to examine how market participants foster cooperation and social order in illegal markets.
Since the mid-20th century, many former postcolonial states have engaged in multiple constitution-making exercises, with the turnover in written constitutions often due to coups or internal conflict. Conversely, people have resisted authoritarian rule through alternative constitution-making. The reality that most countries have had numerous official and unofficial constitutional texts begs the question: How do past constitutions matter in the present? This book explores the social life of constitutional legacies, or how past constitutions matter. Using the case of Myanmar, Professor Crouch demonstrates that constitutions are a palimpsest of past texts, ideas, and practices, an accumulation of contested legacies. Through constitutional ethnography, The Palimpsest Constitution traces Myanmar's modern constitutional history from the late colonial era through its postcolonial, socialist, and military regimes. The Palimpsest Constitution captures the idea that contemporary debates about constitutional reform are informed by the contested legacies of the past.