The Field of Critical Legal Studies in China

Abstract: In the genealogy of the critical legal studies upon the film the Story of Qiu Ju, Ling Bin began to turned his critical stance to compromise, and Zhang Yongle and Xu Bin tried to realize the “Three Unification” synthesizing three legal traditions in China, Chinese classical ritual-legal tradition, the socialist political-legal tradition and the western capitalist legal tradition transplanted since 1980s. This article attempts to put the critical legal studies into the field of international political order, the field of domestic political reforms and the field of political ideologies, and examine why the critical legal studies turned from critical stance to compromise and synthesis. In the political fields, reform of the political system made the political line ambiguous, especially the Party’s role in the constitutional system. At the same time, the transplanted western law has been gradually integrated into the social life in China and promoted the rise of China. So it is necessary for Chinese legal scholars to give up legal thinking in the frontier of American world empire, get out of the theory of legal pluralism in transformational society based upon transplanted law and indigenous law, and explore the ideal legal order for the future of human civilization.