Embedded Courts

Kwai Hang Ng is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. He has written a series of articles (with Xin He) on different aspects of the Chinese grassroots courts, addressing topics including courtroom discourse, mediation, criminal reconciliation, domestic violence, and divorce petitions. Ng's previous book, The Common Law in Two Voices: Language, Law, and the Postcolonial Predicament in Hong Kong (2009), was a recipient of a Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association's Sociology of Law Section in 2010.  Xin He is Professor and Director of Chinese and Comparative Law at the School of Law, City University of Hong Kong. He has published more than thirty articles in the leading journals in the fields of law and society, comparative law, and the Chinese legal system. His previous Visiting Professorships include those at New York University School of Law, University of Illinois College of Law, and Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, China.

1. Chinese courts as embedded institutions; 2. The daily rounds of frontline judges; 3. Cohorts of judges; 4. Administrative embeddedness - the vertical hierarchy of control; 5. Political embeddedness - courts as a stability maintenance agency; 6. Social embeddedness - ties from within and from without; 7. Economic embeddedness - the political economy of court finances; 8. Conclusion; 9. Methodological appendix.