Cultural Paradigms in Property Institutions

Do “cultural factors” substantively influence the creation and evolution of property institutions? For the past several decades, few legal scholars have answered affirmatively. Those inclined towards a law and economics methodology tend to see property institutions as the outcome of self-interested and utilitarian bargaining, and therefore often question the analytical usefulness of “culture.” The major emerging alternative, a progressive literature that emphasizes the social embeddedness of property institutions and individuals, is theoretically more accommodating of cultural analysis but has done very little of it. This Article develops a “cultural” theory of how property institutions are created and demonstrates that such a theory is particularly powerful in explaining large-scale institutional differences between societies. Empirically, it argues that, in the two centuries before large-scale industrialization, China, England, and Japan displayed systematic and fundamental differences in their regulation of property use and transfer. It further argues that these legal and institutional differences are best explained by certain aspects of social culture, specifically by the criteria for sociopolitical status distribution. Some of these criteria are distinctly “cultural” in the sense that they were probably generated by the widespread social internalization of moral values, rather than by utilitarian bargaining. Cultural paradigms can exist, therefore, in property institutions. If we assume, as conventional law and economics urges, that individuals generally approach property use and regulation through a self-interested and utilitarian mindset, their pursuit of personal utility can nonetheless be constrained or empowered by cultural norms of status distribution that determine their relative bargaining power

Social Hierarchies and the Formation of Customary Property Law in Pre-Industrial China and England

Comparative lawyers and economists have often assumed that traditional Chinese laws and customs reinforced the economic and political dominance of elites and, therefore, were unusually “despotic” towards the poor. Such assumptions are highly questionable: Quite the opposite, one of the most striking characteristics of Qing and Republican property institutions is that they often gave significantly greater economic protection to the poorer segments of society than comparable institutions in early modern England. In particular, Chinese property customs afforded much stronger powers of redemption to landowners who had pawned their land. In both societies, land-pawning occurred far more frequently among poorer households than richer ones, but Chinese customary law allowed debtors to indefinitely retain redemption rights over collateralized property, whereas English debtors would generally lose the property permanently if they failed to redeem within one year. This article argues that the comparatively “egalitarian” tendencies of Qing and Republican property institutions stemmed from the different ways Chinese and English rural communities allocated social status and rank. Hierarchical “Confucian” kinship networks dominated social and economic life in most Chinese villages. Within these networks, an individual’s status and rank depended, in large part, on his age and generational seniority, rather than personal wealth. This allowed many low-income households to enjoy status and rank quite disproportionate to their wealth. In comparison, substantial landed wealth was generally a prerequisite for high status in early modern England, effectively excluding lower-income households from positions of sociopolitical authority. Chinese smallholders possessed, therefore, significantly more social bargaining power, and were more capable of negotiating desirable property institutions. Paradoxically, the predominance of kinship hierarchies actually enhanced macro-level political and economic equality

Why the Chinese Public Prefer Administrative Petitioning Over Litigation

In recent years, the Chinese public, when facing disputes with government officials, have preferred a non-legal means of resolution, the Xinfang system, over litigation. Some scholars explain this by claiming that administrative litigation is less effective than Xinfang petitioning. Others argue that the Chinese have historically eschewed litigation and continue to do so habitually. This paper proposes a new explanation: Chinese have traditionally litigated administrative disputes, but only when legal procedure is not too adversarial and allows for the possibility of reconciliation through court-directed settlement. Since this possibility does not formally exist in modern Chinese administrative litigation, people tend to avoid it

The Pragmatic Court: Reinterpreting the Supreme People’s Court of China

This Article examines the institutional motivations that underlie several major developments in the Supreme People\u27s Court of China\u27s recent policy-making. Since 2007, the SPC has sent off a collection of policy signals that escapes sweeping ideological labeling: it has publically embraced a populist view of legal reform by encouraging the use of mediation in dispute resolution and popular participation in judicial policy-making, while continuing to advocate legal professionalization as a long-term policy objective. It has also eagerly attempted to enhance its own institutional competence by promoting judicial efficiency, simplifying key areas of civil law, and expanding its control over lower court adjudication. This Article argues that the strongest institutional motivation underlying this complex pattern of activity is, contrary to some common assumptions, neither simple obedience to the Party leadership nor internalized belief in some legal reform ideology, whether legal professionalism or populism. Instead, it is the pragmatic strengthening of the SPC\u27s own financial security and sociopolitical status-the SPC is, in many ways, a rational actor that pursues its institutional self-interest. This theory of institutional pragmatism brings unique analytical cohesion to the SPC\u27s recent behavior, giving us a clearer sense of its current priorities and, perhaps, its future outlook

Property Rights in Land, Agricultural Capitalism, and the Relative Decline of Pre-Industrial China

Scholars have long debated how legal institutions influenced the economic development of societies and civilizations. This Article sheds new light on this debate by reexamining, from a legal perspective, a crucial segment of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century economic divergence between England and China: By 1700, English agriculture had become predominantly capitalist, reliant on “managerial” farms worked chiefly by hired labor. On the other hand, Chinese agriculture counterproductively remained household-based throughout the Qing and Republican eras. The explanation for this key agricultural divergence, which created multiple advantages for English proto-industry, lies in differences between Chinese and English property rights regimes, but in an area largely overlooked by previous scholarship. Contrary to common assumptions, Qing and Republican laws and customs did recognize private property and, moreover, allowed reasonably free alienation of it. Significant inefficiencies existed, however, in the specific mechanisms of land transaction: The great majority of Chinese land transactions were “conditional sales” that, under most local customs, guaranteed the “seller” an interminable right of redemption at zero interest. In comparison, early modern English laws and customs prohibited the redemption of “conditional” conveyances—mainly mortgages—beyond a short time frame. Consequently, Chinese farmers found it very difficult to securely acquire land, whereas English farmers found it reasonably easy. Over the long run, this impeded the spread of capitalist agriculture in China, but promoted it in England. Differences between Chinese and English norms of property transaction were, therefore, important to Qing and Republican China’s relative economic decline. By locating the causes of key global economic trends in customary property rights, the Article also has ramifications for influential theories of social norm formation and law and development

Beyond Methodological Eurocentricism: Comparing the Chinese and European Legal Traditions

The comparative study of Chinese and European legal history is arguably as old as the social sciences themselves. Comparisons between the Chinese legal tradition and European ones lie, after all, at the heart of Max Weber\u27s seminal studies on economy and society-hardly surprising, given Weber\u27s extensive legal background.\u27 In recent decades, comparative Chinese and European legal history, broadly defined, has thrived in both Chinese academic circles and foreign ones, across a number of disciplines, including history, law, economics, and sociology

Moral Economies in Early Modern Land Markets: History and Theory

This article considers the applicability of moral economy theories to early modern land markets. It asks whether moral norms--specifically, moral condemnation of land selling--substantially impeded land alienation in several major early modern economies: China, England, and Japan. Historians and anthropologists have long argued that they did, but a review of recent scholarship fails to unearth any robust evidence in favor of their assertions. The article then considers the theoretical underpinnings of the moral economy thesis, and argues that, at least in theory, early modern land markets are probably some of the least hospitable terrain for the thesis: The enormous socioeconomic importance of land in pre-industrial economies actually makes it much less likely that societies morally condemned land selling

Legal Internalism In Modern Histories of Copyright

Legal internalism refers to the internal point of view that professional participants in a legal practice develop toward it. It represents a behavioral phenomenon wherein such participants treat the domain of law (or a subset of it) as normative, epistemologically self-contained, and logically coherent on its own terms regardless of whether the law actually embodies those characteristics. Thus understood, legal internalism remains an important characteristic of all modern legal systems. In this Review, we examine three recent interdisciplinary histories of copyright law to showcase the working of legal internalism. We argue that while their interdisciplinary emphasis adds to the conversation about copyright, it also overlooks the centrality of legal internalism in the evolution of copyright, a domain that has always been understood as a creation of the law. The Review unpacks the core tenets of legal internalism, examines how it operates as an important variable of legal change, contrasts it with the idea of legal consciousness, and shows how legal internalism directs and regulates the entry of nonlegal considerations into different areas of law

The Idological Foundations of the Qing Fiscal State

Video of full lecture with presentation slides edited into the video.Taisu Zhang, Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School - Professor Zhang provides a new account of Qing fiscal legislation and policymaking that focuses on the interplay between political ideology and state institutions. He argues that the stubborn refusal to raise agricultural taxes was not merely a pragmatic response to the state’s material circumstances, whether geopolitical, economic, or demographical, but also, and probably more importantly, an ideological and intellectual choice. Qing lawmakers locked agricultural tax quotas at very low levels largely because their ideological worldview advised—vigorously—against raising them. He traces this ideological worldview to paradigmatic changes in political thought generated by the trauma of the Ming-Qing transition.Cornell East Asia Program1_p4vnqtq

Social Hierarchies and the Formation of Customary Property Law in Pre-Industrial China and England

Comparative lawyers and economists have often assumed that traditional Chinese laws and customs reinforced the economic and political dominance of elites and, therefore, were unusually “despotic” towards the poor. Such assumptions are highly questionable: Quite the opposite, one of the most striking characteristics of Qing and Republican property institutions is that they often gave significantly greater economic protection to the poorer segments of society than comparable institutions in early modern England. In particular, Chinese property customs afforded much stronger powers of redemption to landowners who had pawned their land. In both societies, land-pawning occurred far more frequently among poorer households than richer ones, but Chinese customary law allowed debtors to indefinitely retain redemption rights over collateralized property, whereas English debtors would generally lose the property permanently if they failed to redeem within one year. This article argues that the comparatively “egalitarian” tendencies of Qing and Republican property institutions stemmed from the different ways Chinese and English rural communities allocated social status and rank. Hierarchical “Confucian” kinship networks dominated social and economic life in most Chinese villages. Within these networks, an individual’s status and rank depended, in large part, on his age and generational seniority, rather than personal wealth. This allowed many low-income households to enjoy status and rank quite disproportionate to their wealth. In comparison, substantial landed wealth was generally a prerequisite for high status in early modern England, effectively excluding lower-income households from positions of sociopolitical authority. Chinese smallholders possessed, therefore, significantly more social bargaining power, and were more capable of negotiating desirable property institutions. Paradoxically, the predominance of kinship hierarchies actually enhanced macro-level political and economic equality