Research Expertise and Interest

law, Mainland China, Hong Kong

Research Description

Rachel E. Stern is a Professor of Law and Political Science. Her research looks at law in Mainland China and Hong Kong, especially the relationship between legal institution building, political space, and professionalization. Stern is the author of Environmental Litigation in China: A Study in Political Ambivalence (Cambridge University Press 2013), as well as numerous articles on legal mobilization and lawyers in contemporary China.

Stern is currently part of a collaborative effort to analyze the 60+ million Chinese judicial decisions placed online following a 2014 policy change. This massive expansion in the public record of court activity promises to re-shape our understanding of Chinese law and, beyond China, of authoritarian legality.

Before joining Berkeley Law and the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, Stern was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard University Society of Fellows. She also currently serves as series editor for the Law and Society series at Cambridge University Press.