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Associate Professor, Faculty of Law

Prof. PILS Eva 艾華副教授

Tel:

Fax:

Email:

Office:

(852) 3943 1114

(852) 2994 2505

evapils@cuhk.edu.hk

Room 644,
Faculty of Law,
6/F, Lee Shau Kee Building,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Sha Tin, NT, Hong Kong SAR

Eva Pils joined the Faculty in 2007. She studied law, philosophy and sinology in Heidelberg (Germany), London and Beijing, and holds a PhD in law from the University of London. She previously taught at Cornell Law School and at University College London. Her scholarship focuses on human rights and China, with publications addressing the role and situation of Chinese human rights defenders, property law and land rights in China, the status of migrant workers, the Chinese petitioning system and conceptions of justice in China. Her teaching expertise includes comparative constitutional law, criminal law, dispute resolution and justice, human rights, jurisprudence, law and society in China, and property law in China. Eva is currently the director of the CUHK Centre for Rights and Justice, a member of the CUHK Centre for Civil Society Studies and a Nonresident Senior Research Fellow at NYU’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute .

Education

Referendar Exam in Law (Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany)
Assessor Exam in Law (Heidelberg, Germany)
LL.M. (London)
Diploma, EU-China Legal and Judicial Co-operation Programme (Beijing)
Ph.D. (London)

Admissions

Admission to Bar in Germany, 2000

Awards

CUHK Research Excellence Award, 2009-2010
Citation of Merit, Human Rights Press Awards 2009 (with Jerome A Cohen, see http://www.feer.com/politics/2009/march53/human-rights-awards-2008)

Appointments

New York University School of Law U.S.-Asia Law Institute, Nonresident Senior Research Fellow (since February 2011)
New York University School of Law, U.S.-Asia Law Institute, Kwang Hua Visiting Fellow, 2009 (February-March)
Cornell University School of Law, Clarke Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor, 2006
New York University School of Law, Global Research Fellow, 2004/2005

Research Interests

Chinese Law
Legal and Political Philosophy
Human Rights
Comparative Law

Research Projects

"Property rights and wrongs in rural and suburban China", direct grant research project
Co-Investigator, "Barometer of China’s Development" (CERG; principal investigator: Pierre Landry)

Representative Publications

Books:

Comparative Perspectives on Criminal Justice in China, edited with Mike McConville (Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham and Northampton: 2013).
Full text: ELGAR ONLINE (Purchase)
Liu Xiaobo, Charter 08 and the Challenges of Political Reform in China, edited with Jean-Philippe Béja and Fu Hualing (Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong: 2012).
Full text: AMAZON (Purchase)

Articles and book chapters:

‘“Disappearing” China’s Human Rights Lawyers,’ in Mike McConville and Eva Pils (editors), Comparative Perspectives on Criminal Justice in China, Elgar Publishing (2013).
(with Joshua Rosenzweig, Flora Sapio, Jiang Jue, and Teng Biao) ‘The 2012 Revision of the Chinese Criminal Procedure Law: (Mostly) Old Wine in New Bottles (17 May 2012),’ CRJ Occasional Papers Series (May 2012), published in Mike McConville and Eva Pils (editors), Comparative Perspectives on Criminal Justice in China, Elgar Publishing (2013).
‘Introduction: Discussing “civil society” and “liberal communities” in China,’ in Locating civil society: communities defending basic liberties, aspecial issue of China Perspectives 2012 vol.3, September 2012, pp. 2-7; in French: ‘Introduction: “Société civile” et “communautés libérales” en Chine,’ A la recherche de la société civile: des groupes défendant les libertés fondamentales (dossier sous la direction de Eva Pils), Perspectives Chinoises 2012 vol.3, Septembre 2012), pp. 2-8.
‘The dislocation of the Chinese Human Rights Movement,’ in Stanley Lubman (editor), The Evolution of Law Reform in China (Elgar: 2012); originally publishedin Stacy Mosher and Patrick Poon (editors) A Sword and a Shield: China's Human Rights Lawyers; (China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group: Hong Kong, 2009), pp. 141-159; (in Chinese: ‘中国人权运动的错配,’ in 潘嘉伟，毛雪萍 (编者), 剑与盾：中国维权律师，中国维权律师关注组， 2011).
‘Taking Yuan (冤) Seriously: Why the Chinese Government Should Stop Suppressing Citizen Complaints against Injustice,’ 25 Temple International and Comparative Law Journal (2011) pp. 285-327.
‘Charter 08 and Violent Resistance: the Dark Side of the Chinese Weiquan Movement,’ forthcoming in Jean-Philippe Béja, Fu Hualing and Eva Pils (editors), Liu Xiaobo, Charter 08 and the Challenges of Political Reform in China, (Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong: 2012) pp. 229-250.
‘Chinese Property law as an Image of PRC history’, Hong Kong Law Journal (2010) pp. 595-611. Reprinted in Perry Keller (editor), Obligations and Property Rights in China (Ashgate, 2012).
‘The practice of law as conscientious resistance: Chinese weiquan lawyers’ experience’, forthcoming in Jean-Philippe Béja (editor), The impact of China’s 1989 Tiananmen massacre (Routledge, 2011), pages 109-124.
‘Waste No Land: Property, Dignity and Growth in Urbanizing China’, Asian-Pacific Law & Policy Journal Vol. 11, issue 2 (2010) pp. 1-48, available at http://www.hawaii.edu/aplpj/articles/APLPJ_11.2_pils.pdf; draft (2009) included in Cornell Law School Working Paper Series at http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clsops_papers/59.
With Yves Cabannes, ‘How People Face Evictions: Nongkou Village, Hangzhou, China’ in Yves Cabannes, Silvia Guimarães Yafai and Cassidy Johnson, How People Face Evictions, draft (June 2010), available online at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dpu/k_s/publications/how_ppl_face_evictions; pages 60-73.
‘Peasants’ Struggle for Land in China’, in Yash Ghai and Jill Cottrell (eds.), Marginalized Communities and Access to Justice (Routledge, 2009), pp. 136-160.
‘Rights Activism in China: the Case of Lawyer Gao Zhisheng,’ in Stephanie Balme and Michael C. Dowdle (eds.), Building Constitutionalism in China (Palgrave, New York: 2009), pp. 243-260.
‘Yang Jia and China’s Unpopular Criminal Justice System,’ in China Rights Forum no. 1 (2009), pp. 59-66.
‘Asking the Tiger For His Skin: Rights Activism in China,’ Vol XXX (2007) Fordham International Law Journal, pp.1209 -1287.
‘Land disputes, rights assertion and social unrest: a case from Sichuan’, 19 Columbia Journal of Asian Law (2006)365; reprinted as Hauser Global Law School Working Paper 07/05 and in Perry Keller (editor), Obligations and Property Rights in China (Ashgate, 2012).

Op-ed pieces, etc.:

‘China must be held to account over “disappeared” lawyers,’ The Guardian, 31 March 2011 at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/31/china-disappeared-lawyers
With Jerome A Cohen, 'Empty Chairs in Oslo Speak Volumes', Wall Street Journal Asia, 10 November 2011 at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703805004575607352440807256.html (in Chinese: ‘柯恩专栏－奧斯陸空蕩的座位孔傑榮,’ 中国时报 (China Times), 22 November 2010 at http://www.usasialaw.org/?p=4599#chinese.
With Jerome A Cohen, ‘Rules and Reality. New guidelines to ban coerced confessions will be tested in a case before China's top court,’ South China Morning Post, 2 September 2010 (in Chinese: ‘柯恩专栏－刑事司法存在两个中国,’ 中国时报 (China Times), 2 September 2010 at http://www.usasialaw.org/?p=4102).
With Jerome A Cohen, ‘The Fate of China’s Human Rights Lawyers’ Far Eastern Economic Review, December 2009, at http://www.feer.com/essays/2009/december51/cohenpils.
‘China Can’t Arrest the Momentum of Charter ’08,’ The Wall Street Journal Asia, 26 June 2009, at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124595229680255141.html.
With Jerome A Cohen, ‘The Disappearance of Gao Zhisheng,’ The Wall Street Journal Asia, 9 February 2009, at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123410699583160731.html.
‘China’s Troubled Legal Profession’, Far Eastern Economic Review, May 2008 43-46.
With Jerome A Cohen, and ‘Hu Jia in China’s Legal Labyrinth’, Far Eastern Economic Review (April 2008) pages 52-54; this article won a Human Rights Press Award Citation of Merit (http://www.feer.com/politics/2009/march53/human-rights-awards-2008) .
With Leïla Choukroune, ‘Les nouveaux avocats de la défense’, Hommes & Libertés no. 142 (Avril/Mai/Juin 2008) 30-33.

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