Publications

Ethan Michelson. 2022. Decoupling: Gender Injustice in China’s Divorce Courts (Cambridge University Press)

(NOTE: Feel free to contact me if you have trouble accessing any of the following publications.)

Ethan Michelson. 2020. “Possession is Nine-Tenths of the Law: Why Wife-Beaters Are Awarded Child Custody in China’s Divorce Courts.” Journal of Comparative Law 15(2) [PDF]

Ethan Michelson. 2020. “In Search of Activist Lawyers in China: A Time Machine Back to the Heyday of Political Activism in the Chinese Legal Profession.” Wisconsin International Law Journal 37(2): 350-414 [PDF]

Ethan Michelson. 2019. “Many Voices in China’s Legal Profession: Plural Meanings of Weiquan.” China Law and Society Review 4(2): 71-101 [PDF] [PDF]

Ethan Michelson. 2019. “Decoupling: Marital Violence and the Struggle to Divorce in China.” American Journal of Sociology 125(2): 325-381. (lead article) [PDF] [Supplemental Materials]

Benjamin L. Read and Ethan Michelson. 2018. “Village Dispute Mediation in China, 2002–2010: An Enduring Institution amid Rural Change.” Asian Journal of Law and Society 5(2): 433-452. [PDF]

Ethan Michelson, 2015. “Immigrant Lawyers and the Changing Face of the U.S. Legal Profession.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 22(1): 105-111. [PDF]

Sida Liu, Lily Liang, and Ethan Michelson. 2014. “Migration and Social Structure: The Spatial Mobility of Chinese Lawyers.” Law & Policy 36(2): 165-194. [PDF]

Ethan Michelson. 2013. “Women in the Legal Profession, 1970-2010: A Study of the Global Supply of Lawyers.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 20(2): 1071-1137. [PDF]

Ethan Michelson. 2012. “Public Goods and State-Society Relations: An Impact Study of China’s Rural Stimulus.” Pp. 131-57 in The Global Recession and China’s Political Economy, edited by Dali L. Yang. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. [PDF]

Ethan Michelson. 2012. “Access to Lawyers: A Comparative Analysis of the Supply of Lawyers in China and the United States.” National Taiwan University Law Review 7(1): 223-255. [PDF]

Ethan Michelson and Benjamin L. Read. 2011. “Public Attitudes toward Official Justice in Beijing and Rural China.” Pp. 169-203 in Chinese Justice: Civil Dispute Resolution in Contemporary China, edited by Margaret Y.K. Woo and Mary E. Gallagher. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. [PDF]

Ethan Michelson and Sida Liu. 2010. “What Do Chinese Lawyers Want? Political Values and Legal Practice in China.” Pp. 310-333 in China’s Emerging Middle Class: Beyond Economic Transformation, edited by Cheng Li. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press. [PDF]

Ethan Michelson. 2010. “Family Planning Enforcement in Rural China: Enduring State-Society Conflict?” Pp. 189-226 in Growing Pains: Tensions and Opportunity in China’s Transformation, edited by Jean C. Oi, Scott Rozelle, and Xueguang Zhou. Stanford, CA: Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, distributed by Brookings Institution Press. [PDF]

Ethan Michelson. 2009. “Gender Inequality in the Chinese Legal Profession.” Research in the Sociology of Work 19: 337-76. [PDF]

Benjamin L. Read and Ethan Michelson. 2008. “Mediating the Mediation Debate: Conflict Resolution and the Local State in China.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 52(5): 737-64. [PDF]

Ethan Michelson. 2008. “Dear Lawyer Bao: Everyday Problems, Legal Advice, and State Power in China.” Social Problems 55(1): 43-71. [PDF]

Ethan Michelson. 2008. “Justice from Above or Below? Popular Strategies for Resolving Grievances in Rural China.” The China Quarterly 193: 43–64. [PDF]

  • Winner of the 2009 Gordon White Prize for most original article or research report published in The China Quarterly

Ethan Michelson. 2007. “Lawyers, Political Embeddedness, and Institutional Continuity in China’s Transition from Socialism.” American Journal of Sociology 113(2): 352–414. [PDF]

  • Abridged and edited version reprinted in Lawyers and the Rule of Law in an Era of Globalization, pp. 39-66, edited by Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth. New York: Routledge, 2011 [PDF]
  • Co-Winner of the 2009 Research Article Award of the American Sociological Association Section on Asia & Asian America

Ethan Michelson. 2007. “Climbing the Dispute Pagoda: Grievances and Appeals to the Official Justice System in Rural China.” American Sociological Review 72(3): 459–85. [PDF][Errata]

Ethan Michelson. 2006. “The Practice of Law as an Obstacle to Justice: Chinese Lawyers at Work.” Law & Society Review 40(1): 1–38. (lead article) [PDF]

  • Reprinted in Law and Society in East Asia, edited by Christoph Antons and Roman Tomasic. London: Ashgate, 2013
  • Abridged and edited version reprinted in Working in China: Ethnographies of Labor and Workplace Transformation. pp.169-87, edited by Ching Kwan Lee. Oxon, UK and New York: Routledge, 2007 [PDF]

Ethan Michelson and William L. Parish. 2000. “Gender Differentials in Economic Success: Rural China in 1991,” 134–56 in Redrawing Boundaries: Gender, Households, and Work in China, edited by Barbara Entwisle and Gail Henderson. Berkeley: University of California Press. [PDF]

Ethan Michelson, Edward O. Laumann and John P. Heinz. 2000. “The Changing Character of the Lawyer-Client Relationship: Evidence From Two Chicago Surveys,” in The Management of Durable Relations: Theoretical and Empirical Models for Households and Organizations, edited by Werner Raub and Jeroen Weesie. Amsterdam: Thela/Thesis Publishers.

John P. Heinz, Edward O. Laumann, Robert L. Nelson, and Ethan Michelson. 1998. “The Changing Character of Lawyers’ Work: Chicago in 1975 and 1995.” Law & Society Review 32(5): 751–75. [PDF]

  • Reprinted in Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Ethan Michelson, “Guest Editor’s Introduction.” Chinese Law and Government 31(5): 5–38. [PDF]

Ethan Michelson, “Tradition in the Shadow of Modern Legal Practice: Continuity and Change in the Delivery of Justice in China (I).” Chinese Law and Government 31(5): 39–108. [PDF]

Ethan Michelson. “Tradition in the Shadow of Modern Legal Practice: Continuity and Change in the Delivery of Justice in China (II).” Chinese Law and Government 31(6): 3–104. [PDF]

William L. Parish and Ethan Michelson, “Politics and Markets: Dual Transformations.” American Journal of Sociology 101(4): 1042–1059. [PDF]

  • Reprinted in Shichang Zhuanxing Yu Shehui Fenceng: Meiguo Shehuixuezhe Fenxi Zhongguo (Market Transition and Social Stratification: American Sociologists’ Analyses of China), edited by Yanjie Bian. Beijing: San Lian Press, 2002.