Chinese Law: Knowledge, Practice, and Transformation, 1530s to 1950s (Brill's Series on Modern East Asia in a Global Historical Perspective, 3)

The twelve case studies in Chinese Law: Knowledge, Practice and Transformation, 1530s to 1950s, edited by Li Chen and Madeleine Zelin, open a new window onto the historical foundation and transformation of Chinese law and legal culture in late imperial and modern China. Their interdisciplinary analyses provide valuable insights into the multiple roles of law and legal knowledge in structuring social relations, property rights, popular culture, imperial governance, and ideas of modernity; they also provide insight into the roles of law and legal knowledge in giving form to an emerging revolutionary ideology and to policies that continue to affect China to the present day.

Li Chen, J.D. (Illinois 2002), Ph.D. (Columbia 2009), is Associate Professor of History and Law at University of Toronto. His publications on law and history include Chinese Law in the Imperial Eyes: Sovereignty, Justice, and Transcultural Politics, c. 1740s-1840s (Columbia University Press, forthcoming 2015)

Madeleine Zelin, Ph.D. (1979) University of California at Berkeley, is Dean Lung Professor of Chinese Studies at Columbia University. She has published monographs, translations and articles on China, including The Merchants of Zigong: Industrial Enterprise in Early Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2005)