Legal News

Chinese Quake Survivors Turning to Lawyers, Rule of Law

By Dan Slater

The earthquake that has ravaged Sichuan province, resulting in the deaths of, by some estimates, as many as 70,000 people, is testing the mettle of China’s legal system.

According to a story in today’s WSJ, Chinese lawyers are using TV and the Web to teach ordinary Chinese people — such as quake survivors — how to invoke their rights, from suing the government for certifying building codes for classrooms that crumbled, to suing for discrimination and poor labor conditions.

Jerome Cohen, an NYU law prof and China expert, says: “People who have an interest in seeing the rule of law increasingly implemented . . . are bubbling up from the bottom.” He says that a growing army of lawyers is creating pressure for political change simply by airing the irregularities in the system. Today, the WSJ reports, China has 122,000 full-time lawyers, up from 48,000 in 1997. (That’s still less than one lawyer for every 10,000 Chinese citizens, compared to about one in 300 in the U.S.) The number of civil cases filed by Chinese lawyers in 2006 was up 54% from 2001.

On June 1, new legislation took effect aimed at overhauling how lawyers practice. Defense lawyers, for instance, are now allowed to meet with clients without first seeking permission from judicial authorities, although only after the clients have been interrogated without lawyers present. Chinese courts, however, still aren’t independent of the ruling Communist Party and often refuse to hear politically sensitive cases. There are no juries.

Liu Xiaoyuan, a lawyer with a knack for self-promotion who promotes himself through a blog and frequent TV appearances, said, “You don’t have to kill yourself to be a rights lawyer. You just have to be careful about the methods you use and the way you approach the truth.”

Photo: Getty Images

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 01, 2008 (boomark / email).