Eddie Wei

CSC Cambridge International Trust Scholarship

Judges' Gender and Judging in China

Supervisor: Professor Loraine Gelsthorpe (Institute of Criminology)

Abstract:

Despite frequently voiced concerns about discrimination in the criminal justice system there has been surprisingly little new research during the last decade into the way women are sentenced. My thesis sought to fill that gap: it examined statistical data on Chinese men and women offenders from eight provinces; and it also looked at the factors (blameworthiness, dangerousness, and practical constraints) judges identify as influences on their decision-making. The aim, therefore, was to describe how judges at three main levels (district, intermediate and high courts) set about taking account of substantive differences in men’s and women’s lives and their perceptions of ‘real justice’ for women. 

Research Interests: Feminist Legal Theory, Critical Legal Studies, Law and Development

Professional Affiliations: All China Lawyers Association, since 2008; Law and Society Association, since 2013

Awards:

2019 Jiang-Land-Wang Outstanding Student Paper Award, Association of Chinese Criminology and Criminal Justice

2019 Best Graduate Student Paper Award, Division on Women and Crime, American Society of Criminology

2017 Fitzwilliam College Graduate Scholarship & Senior Scholarship

Publications:

Gendered Justice in China: Victim-Offender Mediation as the ‘Different Voice’ of Female Judges, International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 2020, forthcoming

Judges’ Gender and Sentencing in China: An Empirical Inquiry, Feminist Criminology, 2019, forthcoming.

Unequal Treatment in Pretrial Detention in China, British Journal of Criminology, Volume 57, Issue 6, 2017

Does Gender Play a Role in Divorce Mediation? – Working Pattern of Female Judges in China, Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, Vol. 19 No. 3, 2013

Conference Presentations:

Inaugural Conference for Junior Researchers: On Law and (In)formality, Stanford Law School, 2014.

Graduate Students Workshop, Law and Society Association, 2014.

8th Cornell Inter-University Graduate Student Conference, Cornell Law School, 2012.