Randall Peerenboom, formerly a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles Law School and director of the Oxford Foundation for Law, Justice and Society Rule of Law in China Programme, is currently an Associate Fellow of the University of Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies and a law professor at La Trobe University, Victoria. He has been a consultant to the Asian Development Bank, Ford Foundation, EU-China, UNDP, and other international organizations on legal reforms and rule of law in China and Asia, and he is the co-editor of The Hague Journal of Rule of Law. He is also a CIETAC arbitrator and frequently serves as expert witness on PRC legal issues. Recent books include China Modernizes: Threat to the West or Model for the Rest? (2007), Regulation in Asia (2009), Human Rights in Asia (2006), Asian Discourses of Rule of Law (2004), and China's Long March Toward Rule of Law (2002).

This volume challenges the conventional wisdom about judicial independence in China and its relationship to economic growth, rule of law, human rights protection, and democracy. The volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach that places China's judicial reforms and the struggle to enhance the professionalism, authority, and independence of the judiciary within a broader comparative and developmental framework. Contributors debate the merits of international best practices and their applicability to China; provide new theoretical perspectives and empirical studies; and discuss civil, criminal, and administrative cases in urban and rural courts. This volume contributes to several fields, including law and development and the promotion of rule of law and good governance, globalization studies, neo-institutionalism and studies of the judiciary, the emerging literature on judicial reforms in authoritarian regimes, Asian legal studies, and comparative law more generally.