Advisor(s): Andrew Nathan, Michael Ting, and Thomas Bernstein

Teaching and Research Interest: chinese politics, chinese foreign policy, chinese law, introduction to comparative politics, introduction to american politics, comparative constitutionalism, democtratic transition

Dissertation: "Rule of Law under Authoritarianism--Understanding the Constitutional Initiatives from Chinese Local Courts"

This dissertation examines why certain constitutional initiatives from the local courts were made possible during the last decade in China. Such constitutional initiatives include adjudicating constitutional cases under camouflage of administrative litigation, conducting judicial review despite of its unconstitutionality under the current legal framework, etc. Drawing on formal theories of judicial politics, I develop and test the hypothesis that such constitutional initiatives are constrained by three institutional dynamics: the political environment (the openness of the local party-state), the legislative constraint (the activeness of the legislative supervision) and the hierarchical relationship with upper courts (the discretionary autonomy local courts enjoy from upper-level instructions). The dissertation provides novel perspective for understanding the expansion of judicial power in authoritarian China. The unique parameter this dissertation introduces, local variation of the court system, sheds light on explaining the regime’s surprising resilience.