"This is a book about the improbable: seeking legal relief for pollution in contemporary China. In a country known for tight political control and ineffectual courts, Environmental Litigation in China unravels how everyday justice works: how judges make decisions, why lawyers take cases, and how international influence matters. It is a readable account of how the leadership's mixed signals and political ambivalence play out on the ground - propelling some, such as the village doctor who fought a chemical plant for more than a decade, even as others back away from risk. Yet this remarkable book shows that even in a country where expectations would be that law wouldn't much matter, environmental litigation provides a sliver of space for legal professionals to explore new roles and, in so doing, probe the boundary of what is politically possible"--
Résumé Cet article examine deux thèmes dans les publications récentes sur le droit chinois qui compliquent l'image durable du droit autoritaire comme exclusivement répressif : l'ambition et l'agentivité. Premièrement, l'émergence de la Chine comme puissance mondiale s'est reflétée dans le système juridique, où les tribunaux s'efforcent d'innover et d'exceller. Cette ambition est particulièrement claire dans l'adoption par les tribunaux des technologies et de l'intelligence artificielle. Deuxièmement, le thème de l'agentivité met en évidence les choix stratégiques disponibles pour les juges, les plaideurs et les autres qui interagissent avec le système juridique. Ces choix sont illustrés par des poursuites concernant l'accès aux informations gouvernementales et l'obligation pour des chefs de gouvernement chinois de comparaître devant le tribunal si leur département est poursuivi. Ces exemples montrent que le choix est réel, même s'il est également sévèrement limité.
China boasts over 130 environmental courts opened between 2007 and 2013, a trend that promises to re-shape environmental law. What accounts for the political appeal of specialized justice? Overall, China's specialized environmental courts are a method for local officials to signal commitment to environmental protection and a forum to defuse potentially explosive disputes. They symbolize the increasing importance placed by China's leaders on environmental issues, while also offering welcome flexibility. Courts can accept cases when disputes are rising, and turn them away when local power holders are involved and caution appears prudent. Many courts struggle to find enough cases to survive, and even the most active courts do not necessarily tackle China's most pressing environmental problems. A new analysis shows that the Guiyang court's docket is dominated by minor criminal cases-crackdowns against powerless rural residents, rather than more ambitious attempts to hold polluters accountable. China J/GIGA)
AbstractThis article traces a civil environmental lawsuit from dispute to decision to explore how environmental law works, as well as how lawyers and litigants try to work the law. Detailing ground-level encounters with a legal system promoted and carefully watched by political elites offers a fresh perspective on the ways the past 30 years of legal reforms have affected the experience of China's court users. Amid accounts of financial stress, lawyer–client tensions and the hunt for elite allies, what emerges is a story of variation. Although plaintiffs and lawyers agree that environmental cases are hard and wringing concessions out of polluters requires remarkable persistence, the process sometimes creaks forward so that appraisals are conducted on time, help is solicited and compensation won. How Chinese courts work (and how well they work) depends on local circumstances, an insight that suggests that disaggregating expansive concepts like rule of law is a helpful way to explore complexity instead of glossing over it.
This is a dissertation about lawyers, judges, international NGOs and legal action in an authoritarian state. The state is contemporary China. The type of legal action is civil environmental lawsuits, as when herdsmen from Inner Mongolia sue a local paper factory over poisoned groundwater and dead livestock or a Shandong villager demands compensation from a nearby factory for the noise that allegedly killed 26 foxes on his farm. Empirically, this is a close-to-the-ground account of everyday justice and the factors that shape it. Drawing on fifteen months of field research in China, along with in-depth exploration of four cases, legal documents, government reports, newspaper articles and blog archives, this dissertation unpacks how law as litigation works: how judges make decisions, why lawyers take cases and how international influence matters. Conceptually, civil environmental lawsuits illustrate one pathway between litigation and social change in China and, by implication, possibly other illiberal states. With the exception of the first chapter, each chapter introduces a new actor's perspective on the interaction between state signals and legal professionals' response. The key theme, which cuts across chapters on the state, judges, lawyers and international NGOs, is what I call political ambivalence: conflicting official (or quasi-official) signals regarding the desirability of certain types of citizen action. Simultaneous impulses to promote law but control courts, to protect the environment and yet pursue economic growth, generate a medley of statements, cases and regulations that do not necessarily concord. For legal professionals on the ground, these mixed messages translate into a degree of opportunity. Without official sanction or intent, conflicting signals crack open enough political space to allow limited judicial innovation (chapter 3), legal activism (chapter 4), sustained international encouragement (chapter 5) and policy promotion (chapter 6). Even on tough terrain, political ambivalence over law can provide a limited opportunity to probe new roles and, in so doing, gently push the limitations of political tolerance.
