This text explores the role and work of China's supreme court - the Supreme People's Court - focusing especially on the court's role in the struggle concerning the establishment of the rule of law in China's judicial system. It discusses the differing positions of those who favour 'the rule of law' option, where there is organizational separation of legislature and judicial responsibility, and those who argue for the retention of China's present system where judges and the courts are subordinate to the Party and who are concerned by any increase in the court's independent interpretative activities.

Examining the crimes that have recently been of the greatest concern in China, the authors assess the imbalance between public order and human rights in the way the Chinese legal system deals with crime. The issue of crime is of particular importance, both because current social upheaval in China has greatly contributed to the increase of new crimes, and because there is increasing international interest in Chinese law following the country's accession to the World Trade Organization.

This is an in-depth study on contemporary Chinese law reform, presenting a fascinating portrait of a society and legal system grappling with vast social change.

This book examines new crimes, or crimes which are newly of great concern, in China, and assesses the balance, or rather the imbalance, between public order and human rights in the way the law deals with them. These new crimes include 'evil cults', domestic violence, sexual harassment, internet fraud, website pornography, and organised crime in the sex and drugs trades and human trafficking. The topic is of particular importance, both because current social upheaval in China, which is likely to continue, contributes a great deal to the increase of new crimes, and because there is increasing international interest in the law following China's accession to the World Trade Organisation.

This book examines the learning curve of the People's Supreme Court of China as an expanding Chinese national institution that has played a key role in the struggle for the rule of law in China. Within the unity of state administration and the requirements of the constitution, the court has negotiated the changing tension between politics and law through improvising new formats of interpretation and supervision in response to the changing priorities of revolution and market reform.

In Policing the Wild North-West: A Sociological Study of the Provincial Police in Alberta and Saskatchewan, 1905-32, the first comprehensive social history of provincial police in western Canada between 1905 and 1932, Zhiqiu Lin investigates the complex relationship between the role of policing, the political sphere, and social progress. This book attempts to analyze the effects on provincial police in Alberta and Saskatchewan of various social phenomena ranging from political radicals and vagrants to prohibition bootleggers and black market profiteers. These factors placed enormous demands on the development of policing and had a significant impact on three specific and interrelated areas: first, the professionalization of police organizations within society, as evidenced by changes in policing technology, varying political agendas, and, perhaps most importantly, within the police organizations themselves; second, the shifting of focus away from the "dangerous classes" and social agitators towards investigative procedures required for solving serious crime; and finally, the impact of policing on the rates of crime as influenced by the role of police officers as agents of social change and the value of social service in strengthening community and reducing the motivation towards criminal activity. The book concludes with an examination of the transition between federal and provincial responsibilities for policing in the two provinces, the reasons for the disbandment of the provincial police forces, and the broader issues of police development and the rationalization of policing in modern society.