Chinese Seek a Day in Court

The earthquake that rocked Sichuan province is emerging as an unexpected test of China's evolving legal system.

Parents in Sichuan whose children were killed when schools collapsed in the May 12 quake are already demanding justice. Huang Lianghe, who lost his son in the collapse of the Dongqi Middle School in Dujiangyan, believes the quality of the school's construction was at fault and, with other parents, is looking for a good lawyer to take up his cause.

That Mr. Huang has that much faith in China's courts says much about rising expectations that ordinary Chinese enjoy basic legal rights, including the right to sue their government.

On television and the Internet, a new generation of Chinese lawyers teaches ordinary Chinese people to invoke their rights. At camps for survivors of the quake, volunteers recently distributed "law promotion" handbooks published by the Chengdu Justice Bureau that explain the laws that victims can use to sue government officials for certifying the building codes for thousands of classrooms that crumbled in the quake.

China's lawyers are filing lawsuits over discrimination, poor labor conditions, even censorship -- actions once considered unthinkable. And sometimes they win.

China's legal system still doesn't work well, but there's reason for optimism, says Jerome Cohen, a professor at the New York University School of Law and an expert on Chinese law. "People who have an interest in seeing the rule of law increasingly implemented...are bubbling up from the bottom," he says. A growing army of lawyers is creating pressure for political change simply by airing the irregularities in the system, Mr. Cohen says.

Today, China has 122,000 full-time lawyers, up from 48,000 in 1997. That is still less than one lawyer for every 10,000 Chinese citizens, compared to about one in 300 in the U.S. But those lawyers are gaining in visibility.

Lawyers advertise and hand out business cards at courthouses. The narrow lane next to Beijing's Chaoyang District courthouse is crammed with small law offices that have sprung up in recent years to help with last-minute legal needs. On www.carlawyer.cn, traffic-accident expert Huang Haibo promises, "I will protect your legal rights."

Despite the legal system's flaws, Chinese people are increasingly turning to it for help. The number of civil cases filed by Chinese lawyers in 2006 was up 54% from 2001. Citizens with limited financial resources have taken to suing: In the first six months of 2007, China's 3,000-plus legal-aid centers handled 172,600 cases, a jump of nearly 40% from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Justice.

On June 1, new legislation took effect aimed at overhauling how the profession is practiced here. Lawyers and their clients gained some rights long taken for granted in the U.S. and elsewhere. Defense lawyers are now allowed to meet with clients without first seeking permission from judicial authorities, although only after the clients have been interrogated without lawyers present. Police will no longer be allowed to monitor conversations between lawyers and clients.

Some Chinese lawyers and academics had hoped for greater change than the new law delivers. The nation's justice system remains a far cry from what exists in many Western countries, especially when it comes to taking on the government itself. Chinese courts aren't independent of the ruling Communist Party and often refuse to hear politically sensitive cases. There are no juries.

Amnesty International and other groups have expressed concern about a crackdown on lawyers and other rights defenders who take up politically charged causes. By some estimates, as many as 300 lawyers have been jailed, some of them for speaking out on human rights.

Still, the system's credibility is growing. Several lawyers recently filed suits that test a law, which took effect May 1, that promises ordinary citizens greater access to government information. One is hoping to expose police "re-education through labor" practices, sometimes used to detain people without due process. Some lawyers manage to work China's legal system while skirting the political fault lines.

One of the most adept at that balancing act is Liu Xiaoyuan, a lawyer with a knack for self-promotion who writes a popular blog and often appears on TV offering his legal opinions. "You don't have to kill yourself to be a rights lawyer," Mr. Liu says. "You just have to be careful about the methods you use and the way you approach the truth."

Unable to play to a jury, Mr. Liu nitpicks court procedure, appealing to judges about the way they consider evidence and how the police present it. In addition, in Chinese courts "you don't move around continuously -- a lawyer must stay seated," he explains. If he stood, "the judge could say that it was a breach of courtroom discipline."

In one of his biggest victories, Mr. Liu secured bigger payouts for the families of migrant workers killed in accidents. In 2006, he agreed to represent the family of Li Xiuneng, a migrant worker born in China's far-western Gansu province, who was killed by a car while riding her bicycle in Beijing. The driver offered her family wrongful-death compensation of 170,000 yuan, or about $25,000. That is far less than would go to the family of a victim born in Beijing, under local rules. The Li family felt cheated.

Mr. Liu argued that Ms. Li should be counted as a Beijing resident, since she had worked and lived in the city for years. A judge agreed, boosting the award for Ms. Li's family to 470,000 yuan. In recent months, Mr. Liu has won several similar migrant-death cases, which the news media have hailed as a victory for a new legal concept: "same life, same price."

Complaints are already mounting against local government officials in Sichuan over the large number of schools that collapsed during the earthquake. Local authorities say they are conducting their own investigations and have promised to report their findings within a month. Parents say they are talking to lawyers and seeking advice.

"It's still a bit early, but we expect to see a growing number of lawsuits in the coming months," says Chen Xia, a lawyer at the Henghexin law firm in Sichuan's provincial capital of Chengdu. Ms. Chen says her firm is likely to send lawyers into the field to offer legal aid once aftershocks subside and conditions improve.

Mr. Liu says he is ready to help, too. "If approached by any parent from that area, I will definitely take the case in accordance with the law," he says. "This is the lawyer's duty."