The Rise and Fall of Judicial Transparency in China

Date & Time: September 10, 2026 (Thursday) 14:00-16:00

Venue: Room 901, 9/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong

Language: English

(In-person Event)  

(This event is open to academic staff and PhD students.)

Abstract:

In 2015, China’s Supreme People’s Court celebrated its new public database of court judgments—a website called China Judgements Online (CJO)—as the largest in the world. By 2020, more than 100 million cases had been posted online. Then, the site began quietly shrinking, with categories of cases disappearing and far fewer cases posted online.

What happened? This talk will trace the rise and decline of CJO, from the diffusion of the idea that transparency is part of good governance, through a moment in 2023 when it looked like the site might be shuttered, to the Supreme People’s Court’s re-definition of judicial openness away from celebrating scale and toward more actively curating the public record. 

For observers of China, this recent history offers insight into political and level developments in China over the last ten years that goes beyond a too-simple story of tightening political control. For those interested in the global politics of transparency, the talk situates the evolution of CJO into a broader global story. From populist attacks on transparency to restrictions on the availability and use of judicial information, transparency is under newfound pressure in many places around the world.

Speaker:

Rachel E. Stern is Professor of Law and Political Science at Berkeley Law, where she previously held the Pamela P. Fong and Family Distinguished Chair in China Studies. She is the author of Environmental Litigation in China: A Study in Political Ambivalence (Cambridge University Press, 2013), as well as numerous articles on legal mobilization, courts, and lawyers in contemporary China. Her most recent work examines the politics of access to legal information in France and China, and this talk draws on a Cambridge Elements manuscript co-authored with Benjamin L. Liebman (Columbia Law).

Before joining Berkeley Law, Stern was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard University Society of Fellows. She has also been a Fellow at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study and a Visiting Scholar at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS).

Discussants:

Xin He is Mok Sau-King Professor in Law and Chair of Law & Society, The University of Hong Kong

Ying Xia is Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Philip K. H. Wong Centre for Chinese Law, The University of Hong Kong

John Zhuang Liu is Associate Professor of Law, The University of Hong Kong

This is an in-person event. Prior registration is required. Please click here to register. For inquiries, please email Louisa at .

This event is organized by Philip K. H. Wong Centre for Chinese Law (CCL), Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong. To watch recordings of past CCL events, please subscribe to our YouTube channel: The Centre for Chinese Law – YouTube. To keep up with our activities, follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/CCLHKU.

Philip K.H. Wong Centre for Chinese Law at The University of Hong Kong promotes legal scholarship with the aim to develop a deeper understanding of China and facilitate dialogue between East and West. For more information, visit: Philip K.H. Wong Centre for Chinese Law