Heaven Has Eyes: Judicial Populism in the Chinese Legal Imagination

This talk begins with two Chinese expressions that seem to endorse opposite justice principles: 相 (mutual shielding among kin) and 大 (placing justice above family loyalty). Should one shield one’s kin from the law, or turn them in if justice demands it? From this apparent contradiction, Haiyan Lee argues that judicial populism—privileging substantive goals over procedural fairness—is built into the Chinese justice tradition in which high justice always trumps low justice. She illustrates this argument with the 2014 film《黄克功案件》(The Case of Huang Kegong).

This event has been co-organized with the UBC Centre for Chinese Research.

Haiyan Lee is the Walter A. Haas Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. She is the author of Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950 (Stanford 2007), The Stranger and the Chinese Moral Imagination (Stanford 2014) and A Certain Justice: Toward an Ecology of the Chinese Legal Imagination (Chicago 2023).

This interdisciplinary series examines the future of global sustainability, economy and security through the many images and understandings of China, a compelling and sometimes puzzling place. If understanding China constitutes a rational, emotional or symbolic anchor from which one’s ideas, actions and strategies are derived, then there is a need to capitalize on the rich amount of evidence that allows us to examine “China Logics” across time, space and interactions.

Series Conveners: Timothy Cheek, History; Qiang Fu, Sociology; Julia Harten, Community and Regional Planning; Juliet Lu, Forest Resources Management | Public Policy and Global Affairs; Renren Yang, Asian Studies