I am honored to have contributed a short essay to the New York University School of Law’s U.S. Asia Law Institute Perspectives blog, entitled New Directions for the Supreme People’s Court?  Many thanks to those who contributed to this essay in any way.  Special thanks are due to the many Chinese judges (and other court staff) with whom I have had shorter or longer conversations since the border reopened earlier this year,  the people who commented on earlier drafts of the essay, and Katherine Wilhelm for her skillful editing!

This is my third contribution to the Perspectives blog.  In 2022, I contributed Decoding the Supreme People’s Court’s Services and Safeguards Opinions and in 2021 Why I Research China’s Supreme People’s Court.

For those who are not familiar with my long-term interest in the Supreme People’s Court, as the 2021 essay begins, “some say it is my fate in life (缘分) to research China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC).  I was set on this unlikely path in the late 1980s, when I was introduced to a series of Chinese judges who were open enough to meet with a young American and answer my many questions about the epic changes just beginning at their courts. One meeting led to another, and eventually enabled me to write my 1993 article, “The Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China,” [available here] the first systematic study of the court by a scholar from inside or outside of China.