Prof. John Zhuang Liu 劉莊教授
Associate Professor
LLB, MPhil, PhD, Peking University
LLM, JSD, The University of Chicago
Biography
Zhuang (John) Liu’s research interests include courts and judicial behavior, the economic analysis of law, and law and artificial intelligence. He primarily uses quantitative methods to study these topics. His ongoing research projects include studying how judges and lawyers use artificial intelligence; examining judges’ decisions and behaviors using Chinese judicial data and lab and field experiments; and studying law and development with a combination of court and economic data. His work has been published in esteemed academic journals specializing in law and in China studies, including Journal of Legal Studies, Journal of Legal Analysis, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, American Journal of Comparative Law, Journal of Comparative Economics, China Quarterly, and Journal of Contemporary China. In addition to his English publications, he also contributes to law journals in China. He is the author of “Can Machine Replace Judges? Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and Law” (Peking University Press, 2024), the first Chinese book to introduce the application of AI and data science in legal practices and research.
Prof. Liu holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Ph.D. in Law from Peking University, as well as an LLM and a JSD from the University of Chicago. Prior to joining the University of Hong Kong, he was affiliated with the School of Management and Economics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. He founded the legal big data group at the Shenzhen Research Institute of Big Data, which conducts research utilizing extensive judicial decision data from China.
He has served as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School, teaching Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, and Law, and at the University of Virginia School of Law, teaching Introduction to Chinese Law.
Publications
Books
《机器能取代法官吗？人工智能、数据科学与法律》，北京大学出版社2024年出（与卢圣华合著）。(Can Machine Replace Judges? Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and Law. Peking University Press, 2024) (with Shenghua Lu).
Scholarly Articles in English
Live Broadcasting the Courtroom: A Field Experiment in Real Trials. Journal of Legal Studies (2025 forthcoming) (with Yingmao Tang).
The Rise of the Chinese Judiciary and Its Limits: Administrative Litigation in the Reform Period. China Quarterly (2025 forthcoming) (with Yuxia Zhang).
How Do Judges Use Large Language Models? Evidence from Shenzhen. Journal of Legal Analysis 16 (1) (2024) (with Xueyao Li).
Courting a Blue Sky? Understanding the Rise of Environmental Litigation in China. Journal of Contemporary China (2024) (with Wenwei Peng and Shaoda Wang).
Authoritarian Transparency: China’s “Missing Cases” in Judicial Opinion Disclosure. Journal of Comparative Economics 50 (1) (2022) (with T.J. Wong, Yi Yang, Tianyu Zhang).
Live Broadcasting and Decision Fairness of Chinese Judges. China Review 22 (3) (2022) (with Yingmao Tang and Kangyun Bao).
The Internet Echo Chamber and the Misinformation of Judges: The Case of Judges’ Perception of Public Support for the Death Penalty in China. International Review of Law and Economics 69 (2021).
Judicial Transparency as Judicial Centralization: Mass Publicity of Court Decisions in China. Journal of Contemporary China (2021) (with Lei Chen and Yingmao Tang).
Precedent and Chinese Judges: An Experiment. American Journal of Comparative Law 69 (1) (2021) (with Lars Klöhn and Holger Spamann).
Are There Common/Civil Law Differences and Precedent Effects in Judging Around the World? A Lab Experiment. Journal of Legal Analysis 13 (1) (2021) (with Holger Spamann, Lars Klöhn, Christophe Jamin, Vikramaditya Khanna, Pavan Mamidi, Alexander Morell, Ivan Reidel).
Public Support for the Death Penalty in China: Less from the Populace but More from Elites. China Quarterly 246 (2021).
The Jury Trial and Public Trust in the Judiciary: Evidence from Cross-countries Comparison. Asia Pacific Law Review 28(2) (2020) (with Lei Chen).
Legal Techniques for Rationalizing Biased Judicial Decisions. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 16(3) (2019) (with Xueyao Li).
Ownership and Political Control: Evidence from Charter Amendments. International Review of Law and Economics 60 (2019) (with Angela Huyue Zhang).
Mass Publicity of Chinese Court Decisions: Market-Driven or Authoritarian Transparency? China Review 18(2) (2019) (with Yingmao Tang).
Does Reason Writing Reduce Decision Bias? Experimental Evidence from Judges in China. Journal of Legal Studies 47(1) (2018).
Book Chapters & Book Reviews
Book Review on China Netizens’ Opinion on the Death Penalty. China Quarterly (2022).
Computational Legal Studies in China, in Ryan Whalen ed., Computational Legal Studies: The Promise and Challenge of Data-Driven Research, Edward Elgar (2020) (with Yingmao Tang).
Scholarly Articles in Chinese
幻象与本相：法律人工智能及其他，《中国法律评论》2024年第2期。
从“世界模型”看人工智能在法律场景的实际应用，《中国应用法学》2024年第2期。
民意如何影响量刑？——以醉酒型危险驾驶罪为切入，《中国法律评论》2023年第1期（与吴雨豪合著）。
矫饰的技术：说理与判决中的偏见，《中国法律评论》2022年第2期（与李学尧合著）。
庭审直播是否影响公正审判，《清华法学》2021年第4期（与唐应茂合著）。《人大复印报刊资料》2022年第3期转载。
政府放权意愿、混合所有制改革与雇员效率，《世界经济》2021年第5期（与易阳等合著）。
法学中的实验方法，《中国法律评论》2018年第6期。《高等学校文科学术文摘》2019年第2期转载。(An Introduction to Experimental Methods in Legal Studies. China Law Review [Chinese], 6[2018])
影子银行的第三类风险，《中外法学》2018年第1期。(Moral Hazard in Shadow Banking. Peking University Law Journal [Chinese], 1 [2018].)
司法信任与经济发展，《法律和社会科学》2015年第1期。(Judicial Trustworthiness and Economic Development. Law and Social Sciences [Chinese], 1 [2015].)
法学教育与法律决策的内在一致性，《法律和社会科学》2013年第2期。《中国社会科学文摘》2014年第6期转载。(Legal Education and Internal Consistency in Legal Decision Making. Law and Social Sciences [Chinese], 2 [2013]. Reprinted by Social Sciences in China Digest [Chinese], 6 [2014].)