Agents for and Against Change: The Dual Role of Chinese Defense Lawyers in Judicial Reform

Abstract: In authoritarian regimes, lawyers are often perceived as having limited influence on reform due to pervasive political constraints. However, the role of criminal defense lawyers in China reveals a more nuanced and complex reality. This paper examines their dual role as agents both for and against change, highlighting the indirect and multifaceted ways in which they shape China's criminal justice landscape. On the one hand, reform-oriented lawyers promote criminal justice and human rights protections by addressing systemic flaws through individual cases. They focus on narrowing the gap between progressive legislation and outdated judicial practices to ensure that rights-enabling reforms are implemented. Their work, including strategic litigation and public advocacy, not only achieves justice for specific defendants but also exposes broader institutional deficiencies, indirectly driving the possibility of judicial reform. On the other hand, conservative lawyers reinforce the status quo through indirect means. While they may identify systemic issues, their responses prioritize expediency and personal gain, often circumventing reform efforts. By exploiting loopholes, colluding with officials, and leveraging informal networks, they entrench institutional inertia and diminish the prospects for meaningful change. In certain contexts, reformists and conservatists may collaborate to achieve short-term goals, further complicating their roles. This duality underscores the ambivalence of legal agency in authoritarian systems. Reform-oriented lawyers push incremental progress, while conservative lawyers erode these efforts, collectively creating a contradictory trajectory for China's legal reform. These two contradictory roles are dynamic: reformists may retreat into conservatism due to the risks and challenges of sustaining advocacy, while conservatists rarely transition into reformists due to the irrevocable loss of institutional trust. These divergent approaches stem from a combination of structural constraints, individual factors, and historical influences. By illustrating how criminal defense lawyers shape, obstruct, or recalibrate legal reform in China, this paper provides critical insights into the contested and multifaceted roles of lawyers in authoritarian contexts and their implications for the criminal justice reform.