Non-lawyers as Legal Resources for the State: Issues, Institutions and Implications for China's Legal Reform.

摘要

Since 1978 China has been committed to modernizing its legal system, yet a cohesive and independent community of legal personnel is far from established and the tension between the state and the legal community remains high. Despite three decades of legal development, China has not truly made professionalism central to its reform agenda. Among many others, one noteworthy but understudied aspect is the widespread use of non-lawyers in the legal services system.;This dissertation aims to examine the role of the state in the making of professional and non-professional mechanisms in China. In addition to a holistic evaluation of non-professional legal services, the dissertation includes empirical studies and comparative analyses of the two most important groups of non-lawyers---the government-sponsored basic-level legal workers and the non-lawyer staff of non-governmental organizations.;These perspectives reveal a number of important facts. First, the development of non-professional legal institutions mainly serves the purpose of state control. Second, non-professional groups are able to survive only by satisfying the bureaucratic interests of specific state agencies. Third, the staff of non-governmental organizations observed in this study appeared to perform more effectively than basic-level legal workers. Overall, the dissertation argues that the state dictates the formation and operation of both professional and nonprofessional mechanisms in China.