Want a Divorce? In China, Try, Try Again

In 2004, while conducting fieldwork at a local court in southern China, legal scholar He Xin struck up a casual conversation with a judge. On the subject of challenges he faced in the job, the judge grumbled about his law school education, which he characterized as focused more on teaching how the law was written in books, rather than the “law in action.” “Why did no professor mention that, in