The Stability Imperative

Sarah Biddulph is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2014-18) and professor of law at the University of Melbourne Law School. She specializes in the research and teaching of Chinese law. Her research focuses on the Chinese legal system with a particular emphasis on legal policy, law making, and enforcement as they affect the administration of justice in China. Her particular areas of research are contemporary Chinese administrative law, criminal procedure, labour, comparative law, and the law regulating social and economic rights. Her recent publications include: Legal Reform and Administrative Detention Powers in China (2007) and Law and Fair Work in China: Making and Enforcing Labour Standards in the PRC (2013), co-authored with Sean Cooney and Ying Zhu.

Biddulph has written an outstanding contribution to the field of human rights and law as well as to the field of governance and social stability/protests. The uniqueness and strength of the book lie in the author’s ability to bridge and unite insights from different research areas and in her rich empirical material. [Biddulph] shows how issues of human rights and governance are intertwined and shape the life of individual citizens as well as the work of different state and non-state actors and institutions.

Eva Pils, Faculty of Law, King’s College London, and author of China’s Human Rights Lawyers: Advocacy and Resistance:
This book will be of great interest to scholars and students in a variety of areas including Chinese studies, law, sociology, and political science – really to anyone interested in understanding contemporary Chinese society. The author’s thorough understanding of the subject areas discussed is beyond doubt, and the case studies are fascinating, vivid, and detailed.

Sue Trevaskes, Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security, Griffith University, and author of The Death Penalty in Contemporary China:

This outstanding book goes a long way towards advancing our understanding of the nature of the law-society nexus in China today. It fills the gap in conventional understandings of the rights debate and rights practices in China and provides a highly detailed and sophisticated understanding of how law figures in the Communist party-state’s stability imperative, how rights are contested and articulated in legal disputes, and how the party-state responds to these contestations.