Victims, Perpetrators, and the Role of Law in Maoist China

The relationship between politics and law in the early People’s

Republic of China was highly contentious. Periods of intentionally

excessive campaign justice intersected with attempts to carve out

professional standards of adjudication and to offer retroactive justice

for those deemed to have been unjustly persecuted. How were victims and

perpetrators defined and dealt with during different stages of the

Maoist era and beyond? How was law practiced, understood, and contested

in local contexts? This volume adopts a case study approach to shed

light on these complex questions. By way of a close reading of original

case files from the grassroots level, the contributors detail

procedures and question long-held assumptions, not least about the

Cultural Revolution as a period of “lawlessness.”