ALSA 2025 meeting

Once legal liability has been established, a more difficult question arises—how, and to what extent, should that liability be apportioned？Judicial practice in China has often oscillated between two poles, total liability on the one hand, and complete exoneration on the other. Consequently, there remains a conspicuous absence of a middle ground that allows for proportionality and reflects the distribution of fault. Drawing on a limited body of case law and interviews with Chinese legal practitioners, this paper offers a general sketch of how proportional joint liability has been applied in practice, and how the legal system has responded to its conceptual and procedural demands. It further examines how, judges, who rely on their free judicial evaluation, have devised informal exoneration mechanisms in the absence of clear doctrinal guidance. These range from equitable leniency and contractual waiver to non-adjudicative closure, offering flexible responses where formal legal pathways are lacking. Using the notion of proportional joint liability as a conceptual entry point, the paper seeks to chart a potential institutional path between “Everything” as well as “Nothing”. The path seeks harmony between structure and sympathy, binding accountability with mercy, and shaping a framework that listens to the reason of rules and the whispers of exception at the same time.