Dissertation Research: The Role of Public Interest Law in China's

这项研究项目与中国合作伙伴密切合作，研究中国不断发展的公共利益实践如何满足农村9亿农民的法律需求。具体地说，该项目考察了农村法律援助中心如何应对中国经济发展的某些外部性及其伴随的城市化和移民，即改变房地产政策及其监管的法律后果。过渡时期的中国展示了在社会主义行政制度下运作的新的私有化行为者的出现。这些关系既是由土地的估值、土地的使用、所有权和转让产生的，也是由土地的估值产生的，这些估值与上一代明显不同。农村土地的新兴市场使当地社会团体对土地价值的看法复杂化，这些社会团体由地区、宗教和种族定义。土地法作为妥协和计算的产物，可能会创造一系列比实现某些类型的土地比其他类型的土地更好的条件。因此，这项研究的主要问题是：法律援助中心在调解转型社会中不同行为者持有的不同土地所有权模式方面发挥了什么作用？为了解决这个问题，该项目比较了中国农村地区不同法律援助中心的运作，以检查这些机构解决对土地的使用、价值和意义的不同看法的能力。所采用的方法是现场参与客户咨询，并观察索赔人访问法律援助中心的情况及其与法律援助人员的互动。此外，将就法律援助中心的更广泛影响与当地社区成员进行半结构化访谈。该项目以中国案为例，构建了公共利益法在转型经济中的作用理论。

This research project, in close collaboration with Chinese partners, considers the ways in which evolving public interest practices in China are meeting the legal needs of the 900 million farmers in the countryside. Specifically, the project examines how rural legal aid centers address certain externalities of China's economic development and its concomitants of urbanization and migration, namely, the legal consequences of changing policies toward real property and its regulation. Transitional China shows the emergence of new privatized actors operating within socialist administrative systems. These relationships are both produced by and productive of valuations of land, its use, ownership, and transfer, which differ markedly from those of just a generation ago. Emergent markets in rural land complicate views of land value held by local social groups defined by region, religion, and ethnicity. Land laws, as the product of compromise and calculation, may create a set of conditions preferable to the realization of certain types of value of land over others. The leading question of this research, therefore, is: what role do legal aid centers play in mediating the different modalities of land ownership held by diverse actors in transitional societies? To address this question, the project compares the operation of different legal aid centers in rural China to examine the capacity of such institutions to address differences in views toward the use, value, and meaning of land. The methodology employed is on-site participation in client counseling and observation of claimants' visits to legal aid centers and their interaction with legal aid personnel. Further, semi-structured interviews will be conducted with members of the local community as to the wider impact of the legal aid center. The project uses the case of China to build theory about the role of public interest law in transitional economies.