The China Quarterly

Table of Contents - Volume 206 - 2011  

Special Section on Law and Enforcement in China

From Dispute to Decision: Suing Polluters in China*

Rachel E. Sterna1

a1 Society of Fellows, Harvard University. Email: restern@fas.harvard.edu

Abstract

This article traces a civil environmental lawsuit from dispute to decision to explore how environmental law works, as well as how lawyers and litigants try to work the law. Detailing ground-level encounters with a legal system promoted and carefully watched by political elites offers a fresh perspective on the ways the past 30 years of legal reforms have affected the experience of China's court users. Amid accounts of financial stress, lawyer–client tensions and the hunt for elite allies, what emerges is a story of variation. Although plaintiffs and lawyers agree that environmental cases are hard and wringing concessions out of polluters requires remarkable persistence, the process sometimes creaks forward so that appraisals are conducted on time, help is solicited and compensation won. How Chinese courts work (and how well they work) depends on local circumstances, an insight that suggests that disaggregating expansive concepts like rule of law is a helpful way to explore complexity instead of glossing over it.

(Online publication June 20 2011)

Rachel E. Stern is a junior fellow at the Harvard University Society of Fellows. She is currently working on a book manuscript about environmental litigation in China.

* This article is based on research funded by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Grant, a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation, the UC Berkeley Institute for International Studies and the UC Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies. Many thanks to Jenny Chio, Rongbin Han, Jonathan Hassid, Robert Kagan, Kevin J. O'Brien, Stephanie Stern, Leslie Wang and Xiaohong Yu for helpful comments on earlier drafts. Please note that this article does not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.