China’s Dual State Revival

China’s Dual State Revival

Speaker: Prof Eva Pils (King’s College London)

Chair: Dr Silvia Suteu (Lecturer in Public Law, UCL Laws)

About the event:

In recent years, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party has rejected the values underpinning rule of law and relied on controlling society through arbitrary measures. Concurrently, rule of law values are being corroded in liberal-democratic systems with more robust legal institutions and stronger rule of law protections. Drawing on Fraenkel’s 1940 concept of the Dual State as a duality of coexisting normative and prerogative modes of governance, Prof Pils will discuss the implications of China’s current prerogative state revival though two examples, the crackdown on civil society and the crackdown on ethno-religious minorities in Xinjiang.

The event is free and open to all, but prior registration is encouraged. For further information, please email Dr Silvia Suteu at s.suteu@ucl.ac.uk.

About the speaker:

Eva Pils is Professor of Law at The Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London, where she teaches human rights, public law, and law and society in China. She studied law, philosophy and sinology in Heidelberg, London and Beijing and holds a PhD in law from University College London. Her scholarship focuses on human rights, authoritarianism, and law in China. She has written on these topics in both academic publications and the popular press. She is author of China’s human rights lawyers: advocacy and resistance (Routledge, 2014) and of Human rights in China: a social practice in the shadows of authoritarianism (Polity, 2018).

Before joining King’s in 2014, Eva was an associate professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law. She is an affiliated scholar at the US-Asia Law Institute of New York University Law School, an external member of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Centre for Social Innovation Studies, an external fellow of the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law and a legal action committee member of the Global Legal Action Network.

Book your place

About the Public Law Group:

The Public Law Group brings together UCL Laws faculty, research students and academic visitors to discuss recent developments and scholarship in public law, comparative constitutional law and constitutional theory. The group meets regularly during the academic year and is open to all those with an interest in these areas. For further information and to be added to the group’s mailing list, please email Dr Silvia Suteu at s.suteu@ucl.ac.uk.