CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by George Washington University Law School GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works Faculty Scholarship 2020 Order and Law in China Donald C. Clarke George Washington University Law School,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.gwu.edu/faculty_publications Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Clarke, Donald C., "Order and Law in China" (2020). GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works. 1506. https://scholarship.law.gwu.edu/faculty_publications/1506 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ORDER AND LAW IN CHINA Donald Clarke* Aug. 25, 2020 I. Introduction Does China have a legal system? The question might seem obtuse, even offensive. However one characterizes the institutions of the first thirty years of the People’s Republic, the near half- century of the post-Mao era1 has almost universally been called one of construction of China’s legal system.2 Certainly great changes have taken place in China’s public order and dispute resolution institutions. At the same time, however, other things have changed little or not at all. Most commentary focuses on the changes; this article, by contrast, will look at what has not changed—the important continuities that have persisted for over four decades. These continuities and other important features of China’s institutions of public order and dispute resolution suggest that legality is not the best paradigm for understanding them.