PANEL SESSIONS IV TUESDAY JUNE 26 2018 4.30 PM – 6.00 PM

Room: CYTT 3.20

  • JUDGING IN CHINA AND THE EU
    Our panel presents three empirical studies on adjudication in the areas of property law, family law and competition law, and in different jurisdictions including China and the EU.
  • Challenging Eminent Domain in the High People‘s Courts: Procedure is the Key!
    This paper investigates empirically how Chinese courts adjudicate eminent domain decisions for the first time and proves that even the non-independent Chinese courts can curb local governments‘ eminent domain power to some extent. We hand-coded 586 eminent domain judgements awarded by the High People‘s Courts of China from 2014-2015, which were made available by the Supreme People‘s Court of China recently.
  • Gender Inequality in Chinese Divorce Cases
    Gender Equality is a principle enshrined in China‘s constitution, but to what extent is it implemented in divorce cases? This paper explores this question from three aspects of divorce law practice in Chinese courts: whether a divorce is granted, who gets the custody, and how the matrimonial property is divided. It argues in many ways gender inequality is entrenched and reproduced.
  • Judging in Europe: Do Legal Traditions Matter
    EU competition appeals typically involve applications by private businesses to annul decisions made by the European Commission. Moreover, these appeals are first assigned at random to a chamber, with a judge then designated as the rapporteur who will be most closely involved with the case. Using hand-collected original data on the background characteristics of EU judges and on competition judgments by the General Court between 1989 to 2015, we test the extent to which the legal origins of judges bear a statistically significant effect on case outcomes and that the rapporteur plays a crucial role in the decision-making process. In particular, if a rapporteur comes from a country whose administrative law has a strong French influence, the decision is more likely to favor the Commission than if he is from any other EU country. These results are robust to alternative political ideology variables, including left-right politics and a preference for European integration.