Columbia Law School Professor Benjamin L. Liebman (L) and Zeming Liu (Columbia Law '24), co-authors of the prize-winning article "Redefining Law in China."
The Weatherhead East Asian Institute congratulates faculty member Benjamin L. Liebman on winning the Senior Scholar Prize from the American Society of Comparative Law for “Redefining Law in China,” an article he co-wrote with his student Zeming Liu (J.D. Columbia Law School ’24) that appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of The American Journal of Comparative Law.
Professor Liebman is Robert L. Lieff Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Intellectual Life at Columbia Law School, as well as Director of the law school’s Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies.
The American Society of Comparative Law is an American nonprofit organization dedicated to the study of foreign and comparative law. Its Senior Scholar Prize recognizes the best scholarly article published in a recent volume of its quarterly journal, the American Journal of Comparative Law.
In “Redefining Law in China,” Liu and Professor Liebman offer (in the words of the article’s abstract), “the first in-depth study of the Chinese Communist Party’s recent novel attempt to introduce and implement an official legal ideology under the banner of ‘Xi Jinping’s Thought on the Rule of Law,’ one which aims both to create a definitive theory of law and to offer a guide to China’s legal development.”
“This project grew out of numerous office-hour discussions between Zeming and me,” Professor Liebman said. “It was a real joy to be able to coauthor with one of my students—highlighting the exceptional students we have here at Columbia.”
The society names every Senior Scholar Prize after a recently deceased member of its community. The 2025 prize is named for Jerome A. Cohen, the NYU Law professor and expert on the Chinese legal system who passed away last September at the age of 95.
Download “Redefining Law in China” (PDF) by Benjamin L. Liebman and Zeming Liu
