Here’s what the author has to say in a recent email missive
I am pleased to inform you that, after 11 years of research and writing, my book with Terry Halliday, Criminal Defense in China: The Politics of Lawyers at Work, has just been published by Cambridge University Press. The book is now available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle versions at the CUP website and Amazon.com:
https://www.amazon.com/Criminal-Defense-China-Politics-Cambridge/dp/1316614840/
Here is a short description of the book for your reference:
Criminal Defense in China studies empirically the everyday work and political mobilization of defense lawyers in China. It builds upon 329 interviews across China, and other social science methods, to investigate and analyze the interweaving of politics and practice in five segments of the practicing criminal defense bar in China from 2005 to 2015. This book is the first to examine everyday criminal defense work in China as a political project. The authors engage extensive scholarship on lawyers and political liberalism across the world, from seventeenth-century Europe to late twentieth-century Korea and Taiwan, drawing on theoretical propositions from this body of theory to examine the strategies and constraints of lawyer mobilization in China. The book brings a fresh perspective through its focus on everyday work and ordinary lawyering in an authoritarian context and raises searching questions about law and lawyers, politics and society, in China’s uncertain future.
Terry and I would like to sincerely thank everyone on the China Law listserv who has provided help and support during our decade-long research for this project. We especially thank Jerry Cohen, Bill Alford, Malcolm Feeley, and Mary Gallagher for their generous endorsements:
“This brilliant, insightful and balanced book is a fascinating window into the sense of injustice that is increasingly gnawing at the vitals of contemporary China. … Nothing less than the individual freedoms of the world’s largest population are linked to the fate of China’s criminal defense lawyers.”
Jerome A. Cohen, Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
“Liu and Halliday draw together their rich theoretical and comparative backgrounds with unparalleled empirical work to produce what is by far the most probing study in any language of the nature and challenges of criminal defense work in the People’s Republic of China.”
William P. Alford, Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
“Liu and Halliday demonstrate empirically just how powerful is the theory of the legal complex in the fight for basic legal freedoms to explain legal and political change. The book is a stunning achievement.”
Malcolm M. Feeley, Claire Sanders Clements Professor, Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, University of California, Berkeley School of Law
“Liu and Halliday offer a much-needed account of the Chinese legal profession’s role in political change. … This book’s wide-ranging discussion of criminal lawyers’ work and activism is a must-read for understanding the current situation of China’s lawyers during this period of increased political tension.”
Mary E. Gallagher, Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan
