Date: 25Apr 2018
Rule of Law in China: Historical, Cultural, and Comparative Analysis Based on World Justice Project Data by Professor Jeffrey E. Thomas (Associate Dean for International Affairs, Daniel L. Brenner Faculty Scholar, Professor of Law, University of Missouri Kansas City School of Law)
Recent amendments to the Chinese Constitution have heightened concerns about rule of law in China. This presentation will use World Justice Project data to assess China’s progress towards rule of law in the context of Chinese culture and in comparison to Russia. While significant progress has been made in China, which in general has stronger rule of law scores than Russia on the factors used by the World Justice Project, Chinese culture is a major impediment to Western-style rule of law. In Chinese culture, the populace has high tolerance for centralized power and generally puts community ahead of individual rights. Consequently, even though China is more law-oriented than it has been in the recent past, from a Western perspective this tends to be more rule by law than rule of law. However, Chinese culture has a very long-term orientation, so while progress may seem slow, it is possible that someday China will achieve rule of law.
Professor Jeffrey E. Thomas is the Daniel L. Brenner Faculty Scholar, Professor of Law, and Associate Dean for International Programs at the University of Missouri – Kansas City School of Law. He earned his J.D. Degree at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where he was an Executive Editor on the California Law Review. After a judicial clerkship for the United States District Court, he worked as an Associate with Irell & Manella in Southern California. Before joining the UMKC law faculty in 1993, Professor Thomas was a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago (1991-92). At UMKC, in addition to his faculty duties, he served as Vice Provost of Faculty Affairs (2003-2007) and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs (2005-07). He is a two-time Fulbright Fellow to China (1999-2000) and Russia (2010). His primary research areas are Insurance Law and the intersection of Law and Culture. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the New Appleman Library Edition, a widely-cited thirteen-volume authoritative treatise on Insurance Law in the US, and is co-author of a three-volume treatise on Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist Insurance. His Insurance Law articles have been published in the Connecticut Insurance Law Journal (the leading insurance law journal in the US), the Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance (Switzerland), the Journal of Financial Perspectives (UK), Indiana Law Review, the Journal of Risk Management and Insurance (Thailand), the Nevada Law Review, the New Appleman Current Critical Issues monograph series, Rutgers Law Review, UMKC Law Review, and Villanova Law Review. His Law and Culture works have been published by AHD (Turkey), the American Bar Association Press, the American Journal of Comparative Law, the Asia Pacific Law Review (Hong Kong), Carolina Academic Press, Law Text Culture (Australia), Springer Publishing, Statut Publishing (Russia), and the UCLA Law Review. His student comment, published by the California Law Review, was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a Fellow of the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation and an elected member of the American Law Institute.
