Week 9

• Ethan Michelson, “Fight or Flight: Consequences of the Judicial Clampdown on Divorce,” Chapter 9, Decoupling: Gender Injustice in China’s Divorce Courts, 2022
• Enshen Li, “Haste Makes Waste: Why China’s New Plea Leniency System is Doomed to Fail,” Asian Journal of Comparative Law, Vol. 17, No. 1, 2022, pp.76-105

“tremendous variation” of criminal sentencing in criminal domestic violence cases (Michelson 358)

“battered woman syndrome” not recognized in Chinese law.

The concept of justifiable self-defense is recognized in Chinese law (bottom of pg.354).

”courts extend leniency (as the court in this case characterized Wang’s life sentence) not on the basis of justifiable self-defense, but rather according to the defendant’s cooperative attitude, confession, admission of guilt, risk to society, and payment of compensation to the victim’s family” (359).

”Courts affirmed justifiable self-defense in criminal domestic violence cases only sparingly. To the best of my knowledge, they have never invoked – much less affirmed – battered woman syndrome” (360).

”As we know, judges lose points on their performance evaluations for making decisions that harm social stability. Under pressure to maintain social stability, judges do consider public sentiment when ruling on criminal cases” (364).

“In a table, columns show the causes and rows show the outcomes” (problem of statistical interpretation in Li’s article).

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