Environmental Litigation in China (Cambridge Studies in Law and Society)
Cambridge University Press, 4/25/2013
EAN 9781107020023, ISBN10: 1107020026
Hardcover, 314 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
This is a book about the improbable: seeking legal relief for pollution in contemporary China. In a country known for tight political control and ineffectual courts, Environmental Litigation in China unravels how everyday justice works: how judges make decisions, why lawyers take cases, and how international influence matters. It is a readable account of how the leadership's mixed signals and political ambivalence play out on the ground - propelling some, such as the village doctor who fought a chemical plant for more than a decade, even as others back away from risk. Yet this remarkable book shows that even in a country where expectations would be that law wouldn't much matter, environmental litigation provides a sliver of space for legal professionals to explore new roles and, in so doing, probe the boundary of what is politically possible.
1. Post-Mao
economic growth, environmental protection, and the law
2. From dispute to decision
3. Frontiers of environmental law
4. Political ambivalence
the state
5. On the front lines
the judges
6. Heroes or troublemakers? The lawyers
7. Soft support
the international NGOs
8. Thinking about outcomes.