Stanley Lubman, a beloved colleague and a giant in the field, passed away last October. I’ve collected some tributes here from friends and colleagues.
Obituaries
Tributes (in alphabetical order, by surname)
- Bill Alford (see Yuanyuan Shen)
- Vivienne Bath
- Ira Belkin
- Gabe Bloch
- Jean-Pierre Cabestan
- Jianfu Chen
- Josh Chin
- Donald Clarke
- Jerome Cohen
- Mark Cohen
- Alison Conner
- Elizabeth Donkervoort
- Michael Dowdle
- Matthew Erie
- Joseph Esherick
- James Feinerman
- Keith Hand
- Jamie P. Horsley
- Robert Keatley
- Shawn Xiaoyong Li
- Pitman Potter
- Amy Qin
- David Shambaugh
- Yuanyuan Shen & Bill Alford
- Rachel Stern
- Edith Terry
- Greg Wajnowski
- Don Wallace
Vivienne Bath (University of Sydney)
I knew of Stanley’s work and reputation for many years before I finally managed to meet him in person. For the entire time that I have worked in the field of Chinese law, Stanley was out there – working in the developing area of Chinese law, doing research and sharing his commentary on the law and on the law in practice with the Chinese law community and the community at large. In person, he was gracious, generous and interesting. He leaves behind a formidable legacy of scholarship, as well as the many students, practitioners and others who have benefitted from his work. He will be greatly missed.
Ira Belkin (U.S.-Asia Law Institute)
Thoughts and Remembrances of Stanley Lubman
I came to know Staley Lubman in an interesting way. I had been away from the China field for over two decades when, in the year 2000, I travelled to China for the first time on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice to explore U.S.-China rule of law cooperation. Of course, Stanley Lubman’s book, Bird in a Cage, Legal Reform in China After Mao, was on my essential reading list. I was hoping to meet Stanley at some point, but I wasn’t sure how that would happen.
One day, out of the blue, I received a call from Stanley. He had just been to his 50th high school reunion (the Bronx High School of Science, of course) where he reconnected with a classmate who happened to be one of my relatives, a cousin, also named Stanley. My cousin told Stanley Lubman about my interest in China and Stanley reached out to me.
From then on, we stayed in touch. Over the next dozen years, most of which I spent living in Beijing, Stanley would contact me whenever he came to Beijing and we would be sure to have lunch or breakfast. On one visit, Stanley allowed me to arrange a talk for him at the Bookworm. Later he asked if he could include an article I wrote in a collection of essays he was editing for a book. Stanley could not have been kinder or more generous to me. I don’t know if it was our Bronx connection or if Stanley just treated everyone that way, but he always made me feel comfortable in his presence despite our difference in age and Stanley’s stature in the field.
I feel fortunate and grateful to have met Stanley and to have forged a warm friendship with him. I would have liked to have the opportunity to see him more often, but we always seemed to be on opposite coasts, except when we were in China.
The China law field is populated by many warm, friendly, engaging and generous people, some of whom have devoted a lifetime to this work and this community. With Stanley Lubman’s passing, we have lost one of the great ones. He will be missed.
Gabe Bloch (Pony Canyon)
I am so grateful for the time I got to spend with Professor Lubman, as a student in his class at Berkeley, over breakfasts and lunches in Beijing during his many visits back, and via email exchanges over the years. He was always sharing fascinating anecdotes, articles, books, and ideas. Indeed, one of the greatest dividends that my connection to China has paid has been the incredible people that it has allowed me to spend time with, and Professor Lubman sits at the very top of that list.
Jean-Pierre Cabestan (Department of Government and International Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University
I still vividly remember the first time I met Stanley: it was in Paris in the 1980s as I was still working on my Phd. He was so clear in his presentation of China’s legal reforms and so kind to answer questions of neophytes like me. As his obituary indicates, during his whole life, he has kept a close relationship with France and Europe from which I have much benefited. Moreover, having always combined teaching and practicing Chinese law, he has contributed a lot to the field, with both a deep theoretical and concrete understanding of the legal and judicial environment and changes in China. He will be very much missed.
Jianfu Chen (La Trobe University)
It was very sad to me personally and to our (relatively) small Chinese law community to hear that Professor Stanley Lubman has passed away.
I began communicating with Professor Lubman while a junior faculty member and he was always patient and inspiring, never failed to encourage me to pursue my academic goals. While we only met a few times (and mostly in Europe, rather than in America or Australia), his academic works have always been sources of inspiration for my research and study.
Rest in Peace, Professor Lubman, and we will all miss you!
Josh Chin (Wall Street Journal)
One of the best things about being a journalist is the opportunity it gives you to learn tuition-free from legends in their fields. In the later part of his career, Stanley Lubman taught me enough about China’s legal system — and the study of China writ large — to fill a master’s program.
Twice a month from 2011 to 2015, I edited Stanley’s columns for The Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time blog. His columns touched on virtually every major political event in China over that period, from the Wuhan uprising through the trial of Bo Xilai, the leak of Document No. 9, the crackdown on foreign NGOs and the 2015 assault on China’s rights lawyers.
Stanley’s writing for us was deep, deliberate, detailed and careful — the sort of “content” that increasingly struggles to find a platform these days. Try as I might as an editor, I could never nudge him to deliver a hot take. He preferred his analysis cool and nuanced.
Perhaps for that reason, Stanley enjoyed genuine respect in Chinese legal circles, even in his later years. On his occasional visits to Beijing with Judith, he would ask me to arrange meals with legal scholars. I recall sitting wide-eyed and smiling at a lunch in 2014 as one influential but notoriously laconic scholar spent the encounter lavishing praise on Stanley’s work and peppering him with questions.
One of the last columns of Stanley’s that I edited covered the surprise detentions of feminist activists in 2015. True to form, he contrasted that dark development with a recent set of encouraging Communist Party proposals to improve how China’s courts operated — a contradiction he (correctly) predicted would persist. “Court reforms could increase procedural regularity and transparency of decisions in civil and most criminal cases,” he wrote. Meanwhile, “the criminal process will still be used to punish activists and dissenters using power unauthorized by law to punish vaguely-defined crimes.”
WSJ readers who took the time to absorb Stanley’s writing might have been shocked by what unfolded in China in the ensuing years, but they weren’t surprised. As one of his closest readers in his latter years, I’m deeply grateful to Stanley for doing all he could to share the insights and knowledge he collected over the course of his remarkable career.
Donald Clarke (George Washington University Law School)
I first met Stanley early on in my career in Chinese law and was fortunate to have a long and rewarding relationship with him ever since. As others have noted, he was unfailingly kind and considerate, especially to junior colleagues. Perhaps it was due to his subtle influence that I found us seeing eye to eye on a number of issues. I regret very much that I wasn’t able to see him more often in person as I rarely got out to the west coast, but am glad to have been able to see him in DC and other places. He leaves an enviable legacy of pioneering scholarship, warm friendships, and a loving family. Not bad!
Jerome Cohen (Council on Foreign Relations)
Although our paths crossed too seldom in recent years – age eventually takes its toll – I already miss Stan. Fortunately one can still benefit from reading his much-admired scholarship, but what is now permanently lost, at least to most of us, is his humor. I cannot recall a single serious conversation with him that was not relieved by some amusing anecdote that arose out of his professional or academic experience involving China. These stories often reflected as much about the frustrated efforts of foreigners to cope with the challenges of the Central Realm as they did with the problems of their hosts. I especially enjoyed our chats with Anthony Dicks, our first British counterpart. Perhaps, in tribute to Stan, we should collect all the anecdotes our now substantial group can recall. Best to Judith and Sarah.
I first met Stanley while studying at Columbia Law School, and some years later when I interviewed for a job with him when he was practicing at Heller Ehrman.
During my years at Berkeley (2017-2023), I was fortunate to see him and Judith more frequently, often in the company of his colleague and my law school classmate, Greg Wajnowksi. Stanley was very supportive of my work at Berkeley and was one of the best parts of my teaching there. He also participated in several events that I hosted or attended at Berkeley and in the Bay.
I believe that I will remember him mostly for breaking bread together during those years, including our far-ranging conversations around the development of China’s legal system, and China’s unique approaches to intellectual property in the company of Greg and Judith.
I was also fortunate to know him as a child of the Bronx. Like my own parents, he did not give up easily.
Z’l, for his Judith, his children, grandchildren—for all that were touched by him, may his memory be a blessing.
Alison Conner (Wm. S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai’i)
I’m so sorry to see this sad news about Stanley Lubman, a pioneer in the study and teaching of Chinese law and an outstanding scholar. Although I was never his student, like so many others I benefited greatly from his work, and he was generous with his time and advice to younger colleagues. He will be greatly missed by everyone in the field.
Elizabeth Donkervoort (American Bar Association)
Such sad news. My heartfelt condolences go out to his family and friends. His was one of the first textbooks I read on the PRC, sparking my enduring interest in this field. He was a true pillar of the China scholarly community and will be missed.
Michael Dowdle (Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore)
“Dicey, Lubman, and Bagehot: Chinese Law in the Common Law Mind,” Columbia Journal of Asian Law 19, no. 1 (2005), https://perma.cc/6TZ6-CGG4
Matthew Erie (Faculty of Law, University of Oxford)
My first exposure to Professor Lubman’s work was, like many others, his 1999 book Bird in a Cage. It was the perfect book for a China law enthusiast. Prof. Lubman’s deep contextualization of the development of modern Chinese legal institutions (he famously claimed that China still did not have a “legal system”) in Chinese history, politics, and economics became a polestar for me. Prof. Lubman firmly placed the study of Chinese law in the wider law and society field. His 2005 co-edited volume Engaging the Law in China even more so advanced the socio-legal study of Chinese law. After learning so much from Prof. Lubman’s writings, it was a tremendous privilege to have him introduce and discuss a paper I presented at Berkeley’s Center for Chinese Studies in 2018. Even better, before the lecture, we spent several hours walking around Berkeley’s campus talking about “The Future of Chinese Law” (to adopt the title of a 1995 China Quarterly article he wrote). I’ve always found it fascinating to speak to authors whose works have been so influential. What struck me most about spending the little time we had that November day was how humble Prof. Lubman was. His was a discerning and probing, yet always gentle, intellect. Despite being one of the founders of the study of modern Chinese law, there was no ego in his self-presentation. He was encouraging — albeit challenging — in his engagement with juniors. While over the years of reading his many works, I had come to appreciate his careful socio-legal eye, it was his gentility that I remember most from that afternoon.
Joseph Esherick (UC San Diego)
Stan Lubman was a gentle soul with a piercing wit and broad-ranging intellect whom I have known since the 1960s, and came to appreciate even more after we moved to Berkeley a decade ago. I first met Stan when I was a graduate student and young anti-war activist around 1966 and he was teaching at UC Berkeley’s Law School. He occasionally participated in the lunch meetings we held to discuss the latest developments in Vietnam and our readings in Chinese history, and his wise counsel was always welcome. But I especially came to know and appreciate Stan and Judith when I retired from UC San Diego and moved to Berkeley in 2013. We live just up the hill from the Lubmans and I especially enjoyed occasional dinners and conversations with Berkeley’s contingent of legal scholars who had knowledge and insights different from my own. Needless to say, the intellectual exchange benefited immeasurably from the fine food and drink that Judith always provided. Stanley will be much missed, but we hope that Judith will continue her invaluable contribution to the Berkeley China community.
James Feinerman (Georgetown Law School)
I first met Stanley Lubman in the fall of 1976, after having returned to Yale Graduate School following my 1L year at Harvard Law School. At Harvard in the spring of 1976, I had taken a course in Chinese Law with Jerry Cohen, where among other readings we were assigned Stanley’s article “Mao and Mediation: Politics and Dispute Resolution in Communist China,” 55 California Law Review (1967), pp.1284-1359. Jerry had written another article, published a year earlier, “Chinese Mediation on the Eve of Modernization,” 54 California Law Review, pp. 1201-1226 (1966). What intrigued me about Stanley’s article in comparison to Jerry’s was the tongue-in-cheek description of Aunty Wu’s “people’s mediation” in breaking down a resistant object of mediation until final capitulation: “Everyone says Aunty Wu is certainly good at handling these matters, but she says, ‘If I didn’t depend on everyone, nothing could be solved.’” In Jerry’s class at Harvard, we had of course made much use of his The Criminal Process in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1963: An Introduction, a book-length study of the topic. At the same time, I also discovered Stanely’s “Form and Function in the Chinese Criminal Process,” 69 Columbia Law Review 535-575 (1969), and his “Methodological Problems in Studying Chinese Communist ‘Civil Law’,” in Jerry’s edited 1973 volume Contemporary Chinese Law: Research Problems and Perspectives.
So, in the fall of 1976 I was thrilled to learn that Stanley was coming that semester to teach at Yale Law School. As a modest diversion from my task at hand (finishing my doctoral dissertation in Yale’s department of East Asian Languages and Literatures) I decided to audit this class at the law school. Luckily, Stanley was willing to allow me to do so. As a result, I had the chance to study with the two of the most prominent scholars of Chinese law in the United States — and learned a great deal from both of them. In the summer of 1977, I landed a summer associate position at an (at that time) medium-sized San Francisco law firm, Orrick Herrington Rowley & Sutcliffe. Being in the Bay Area, I was able to spend several long lunches and conversation with Stanley, who had returned to the law firm Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe, which would open an office in Hong Kong the following year.
Upon my return to finish the last two years of law school, we stayed in touch as I continued to work with Jerry Cohen, two Vietnamese scholars translating the Le Dynasty Code (which luckily for me was originally written in Chinese characters) and with two visiting professors from Japan, Mitsuo Matsushita and Koichiro Fujikura. Totally unexpectedly, as I was about to finish my J.D. at Harvard and Ph.D. at Yale, President Carter normalized relations with the People’s Republic of China in late 1978. So instead to taking up the associate position as I had planned at Davis Polk & Wardwell, I became one of the first 30 Americans to study in China since 1949 under the Committee on Scholarly Communications with the People’s Republic of China.
Stanley, however, had long preceded us in travel to China by attending trade fairs since the early 1970s in Canton and working with U.S. and international clients. Over the next 16 months I spent in Beijing, we met several times, with Stanley regaling me with stories about doing business in China. I remember him once recounting a meeting with, I think, some German clients where an employee of the Chinese negotiators brought some paper to them, stating “這個是他們昨天電報,” not realizing Stanley’s fluency in Chinese. His clients were incensed to learn that the Chinese side had been privy to their telex communications with headquarters. He introduced me to the bar at the Peking Hotel which he had dubbed, “the Hall of Broken Dreams,” due to number of foreigners negotiating with Chinese entities who stayed there and drowned their sorrows when deals failed to materialize.
Over the next several decades, our paths crossed numerous times – in New York, Berkeley, Washington D.C. as well as often in China. After several years practicing in New York, I eventually found employment first at Harvard and then for the last four decades at Georgetown following Stanley’s and Jerry Cohen’s footsteps teaching among other things Chinese law. As one of the founding members of the Ford Foundation funded Committee on Legal Education Exchange with China (CLEEC), Stanley along with Randy Edwards invited me to join CLEEC. Eventually CLEEC brought over 250 Chinese legal academics to study — many of them receiving law degrees — at U.S. law schools. Although Stanley would later make his way back to academic life, during most of this period he was a busy practitioner traveling back and forth to China for clients. Luckily his wife, Judith, became a key actor herself in the China trade as a buyer for Crate & Barrel, which became a major conduit for Chinese products into American homes. Their daughter, Sarah, eventually also came to work in China as a stringer for the Washington Post, doing some great reporting in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Massacre. I was privileged to get to know them both.
All this time, while busy in legal endeavors crossing the Pacific, Stanley still found time to maintain his scholarly interests in Chinese law. Aside from his work for CLEEC, he wrote or edited five books between 1996’s China’s Legal Reforms and his 2012 edited volume, The Evolution of Chinese Law Reform: An Uncertain Path. A standout among them was his sole-authored Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China after Mao (Stanford University Press, 2000). Each book was a major contribution to the understanding of China’s developing legal system during a period of profound change. Stanley’s keen eye and ear for contemporary Chinese parlance once again gave him the title for his Bird in a Cage book. He took the saying from a post-Mao economic reformer, Chen Yun, who described the Chinese system thus: “The cage is the plan, and it may be large or small. But within the cage the bird [the economy] is free to fly as he wishes.” As Stanley understood, this explanation for post-Mao reform was both descriptive and predictive.
In recent years, I was lucky to see Stanley several times at tributes for his extraordinary career and more individually on visits to San Francisco and Berkeley. In retirement, I knew he valued spending time with family at homes in Berkeley and Inverness. Despite some of the infirmities of age, Stanley retained his quick wit and scholarly interests. Glad that he reached his 90th birthday before passing on, I nevertheless will miss him greatly and feel lucky to have all the contact that we did over half a century.
Keith Hand (UC Law San Francisco)
Professor Stanley Lubman was a dear friend and mentor to many in the field. His groundbreaking scholarship and teaching inspired an entire generation of China scholars. Among other important works, his influential 1999 volume Bird in a Cage was a staple of our teaching and thinking about China’s legal development.
I was deeply grateful for Stanley’s mentorship and support as I started my academic career at UC Hastings. Stanley went out of his way connect me with the Bay Area China studies community and helped me get my feet on the ground in the classroom. He was always willing to provide feedback. I trusted him and sought his advice on even the most sensitive matters.
One of the things I admired most about Stanley was the energy and ease with which he engaged young scholars and professionals. He was always young at heart, and he interacted with us enthusiastically at conferences and his legendary salons in Berkeley. That meant a great deal. His mentorship of young scholars provided a model that continues to be impactful, as those he supported so thoughtfully now work to cultivate their own students and younger faculty colleagues in a similar manner.
The day I learned of Stanley’s passing, I was scheduled to teach a seminar on China and the International Legal Order. Stanley had been very generous in sharing his syllabus, materials, and advice when I first taught this course in 2010. The seminar session was a wonderful opportunity to share his legacy and contributions with my students. I will really miss him and extend my heartfelt condolences to his family, friends, and associates.
Jamie P. Horsley (Paul Tsai China Center, Yale Law School)
Stanley Lubman: “American father” of China’s administrative procedure legislation
I first met Stan Lubman in 1977 when I was a summer associate at a rival law firm in San Francisco. As a student, I had read several of his excellent, earlier articles: “Mao and Mediation: Politics and Dispute Resolution in Communist China,” “Form and Function in the Chinese Criminal Process,” and “Methodological Problems in Studying Chinese Communist ‘Civil Law’.” He, together with Jerome Cohen, with whom I was then studying, Victor Li and Randy Edwards, comprised the “first generation” of modern China law scholars. I was impressed by Stan’s enthusiasm, experience and access, as well as his scholarship. I always enjoyed him when our paths would cross, all too infrequently. We later shared an interest in the development of administrative law in China. One of Stan’s projects for the Asia Foundation was working with Chinese administrative law scholars to draft a proposed PRC administrative procedure law, informed to a degree by the U.S. Administrative Procedure Act, but which has never been enacted at the national level. I was fortunate to have some involvement in the first provincial government level administrative procedure legislation in Hunan, crafted by some of the Chinese scholars with whom Stan had worked a decade earlier and which spawned further local legislation. My last email to Stan, in April 2023, was to let him know that the Jiangsu Provincial People’s Congress had enacted the Jiangsu Provincial Administrative Procedure Regulations in August 2022, the highest level of all such local enactments. I hope that Stan found this development to be gratifying, as reflecting the continued interest in China in the underlying principles of due process, transparency, public participation, and accountability, even as Chinese scholars have been discussing formulation of a comprehensive administrative law code. I’ve always thought of Stan as the “American father” of China’s administrative procedure legislation. My late husband, diplomat John Modderno, independently knew and also very much liked Stan, and his accomplished wife and partner Judith, enormously. Dear Stan, you are missed, but you live on in our hearts. May you rest in peace.
Stan was a good friend for many decades. I first met him when he was working at the Universities Service Center in Kowloon, and I was a young, not particularly knowledgeable reporter based in Hong Kong for the Wall Street Journal. I saw Stan and Judith many times over the following years in various places, especially at their Berkeley home. Stan was a boundless source of good cheer plus interesting facts and opinions about China and much more. He was a pleasure to know and I understand just enough about China’s legal practices to appreciate that he was a major contributor to his field of scholarship. My one contribution to Stan was to give him the (apocryphal?) Keynes quote about Champagne that he tried to live by. I know that his professional peers will miss him, and I will too on a personal level.
Shawn Xiaoyong Li (Boss & Young)
We gather our thoughts to remember and pay tribute to an extraordinary individual who left an indelible mark on the legal world and on the lives of many, including mine.
I met with Professor Lubman in 1994. Back then, being one of just a few well established legal scholars/experts specializing in Chinese law, he led a small group of young lawyers to work on transactional legal works particularly those involving China. I was very fortunate to be introduced to him by a good mutual friend, and joined his team for a short period of time in San Fransisco. I still remember many days and evenings we worked together there. He was in every sense my first lawyer-mentor. And how lucky that was for me to have this wonderful person, intellectually always challenging, kind and warm but firm, to be my teacher. And I also remember the tense hours that we worked together in Hong Kong and in Beijing, but also the fun hours we had dim sum in Hong Kong or breakfast in China World Hotel in Beijing. He seemed to always be a charismatic leader, authoritative and gentle, in the office as well as in social events.
There are surely many other lawyers that Professor Lubman guided, taught, or mentored. His contributions to the study and practice of Chinese law were truly remarkable. He played a notable role in bridging the legal gaps and understanding between U.S. and China.
He dedicated his life to the pursuit of justice and the betterment of legal understanding between different cultures. His legacy will live on in the hearts and minds of all those he mentored.
As we bid farewell to this great soul, we are reminded of his unwavering commitment to the law and his selfless dedication to helping others. May he rest in eternal peace, knowing that his impact will continue to be felt in the future.
Pitman Potter (Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia)
I was deeply saddened by the news of Stanley Lubman’s passing. Stanley was a model legal scholar and practitioner, combining rigorous intellect with a compassionate heart. From his pioneering work on dispute resolution in China to his hugely influential later book, Bird in a Cage, Stanley set an impressively high standard for scholarship on Chinese law. His arbitration and legal consulting work offered compelling examples of legal scholarship in practice. He was also a generous colleague and mentor for younger scholars. I recall with fondness his support for my own early work, “Riding the Tiger” (CQ 1994) and his invitation for me to give a talk at Boalt Hall about my later book on law and policy in China’s peripheries (2011) followed by a wonderful time with Stanley and Judith at their home in Berkeley. Stanley’s passing leaves a great void in the China law studies community, but one made easier to bear by memories of his work and collegiality. I will miss him greatly.
Amy Qin (New York Times)
I was so sorry to hear of Professor Lubman’s passing. I had the true pleasure of working for Professor Lubman as an administrative assistant for several years when I was an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley. Studying at UC Berkeley can be an overwhelming experience—it’s easy to get lost in the crowd in the huge auditoriums and professors often come across as very intimidating and inaccessible. But through working for Professor Lubman, I was able to see up close the incredible commitment, discipline and work that goes into an illustrious academic and legal career. Over the years, I spent hours in his basement in North Berkeley, helping to print out China-related news clippings and papers and file them in the meticulously organized filing cabinet system that took up essentially the entire room. Throughout it all, he was so incredibly warm and encouraging, writing recommendation letters for my grad school applications and putting me in touch with various contacts. During catch-ups over lunch at Cesar, I would pinch myself that I got to be in the presence of such a bona fide academic celebrity. As I have progressed in my career in the China field, I have thought often and fondly of Professor Lubman over the years. Professor Lubman was a wonderful mentor and scholar, and he will be missed dearly.
Lester Ross (WilmerHale LLP)
I was saddened to learn of Stan’s passing. We had first briefly met in Hong Kong but my longest interaction with Stan was as his student in a class on Chinese law which he taught at Harvard.
His knowledge of the subject matter was both broad and detailed. Stan was particularly gracious in reviewing my paper for the class and helping me to polish it for publication.
We would continue to run across each other over the years and I always gained from such meetings.
May his memory be a blessing.
David Shambaugh (George Washington University)
I knew Stanley over 40 years, first meeting in Beijing in 1984. I recall in particular a meal together in the Peking Hotel restaurant where we were two of the only patrons (and enjoyed their bon bon ji). I then got to know him better through our mutual friend—and Stanley’s junior partner Greg Wajnowski—in Hong Kong during the mid-1980s. Then, once I moved to London in 1988 for a decade we interacted quite a few times, when he was affiliated with the British firm Allen and Overy. One memorable time was when I asked Stanley if he would help conceptualize and lead a special issue of The China Quarterly, of which I was then the Editor, on Chinese legal reforms. That special issue was published in 1991 and remains a definitive assessment of that era of law-building in China, and Stanley wrote both the Introductory overview article as well as a concluding one that peered into the future. Looking back now and rereading these essays, Stanley was ever so prescient. Subsequently, we interacted once I relocated back to the United States in the late-1990s. Throughout these decades of interactions, I was also impressed by Stanley’s erudite class, his sharp sense of humor and searing wit, his phenomenal memory for details of the Chinese system, his ability to contextualize China law issues in the broader canvass of US-China relations, his sincere interest in what others had to say, and his deep love for Judith and admiration for his children’s accomplishments. I last visited Stanley at their Berkeley home in 2023 and 2024, and well recall the twinkle in his eye. I shall always cherish my time together with Stanley Lubman. The China Studies field has lost a true giant.
Yuanyuan Shen (Zhejiang University Law School & Boston College Law School) & Bill Alford (Harvard Law School)
Because Stanley was so important to both of us, and someone about whom we have often spoken with much affection, we wanted to write this expression of our gratitude, tribute and condolence together.
Yuanyuan remembers Stanley as an extraordinary teacher, both in the classroom and as the supervisor of her LL.M. paper at Harvard. She recalls sensing that her initial detailed outline for that paper — which would be her first sustained piece of writing in the US — might need some work. But she was taken aback when he returned it to her, informing her in his office that he was certain she could do better and insistent that she do so. That prompted tears on her part but, importantly, spurred her to throw herself into her writing to meet the high standard Stan set for her. And to this day, three and a half decades later, as she writes and as she teaches (both at Boston College Law School and Zhejiang University Law School), she thinks fondly and appreciatively of the life lessons Stan taught her.
So many memories of Stan flood back to Bill that it is hard to know which to recount. Stan’s pivotal role in the success of the Committee on Legal Education Exchange with China – which pioneered the first two decades of post Cultural Revolution interaction between the two nations in legal education — reveal what an amazing person he was. For years, he brought his superb lawyerly acumen to playing a key role in making it possible for the great Randy Edwards, founder of CLEEC, and the rest of us to play a constructive role in helping Chinese legal education find a path forward. And he did it with grace, humor (always seeing the absurd), and a wonderful sense of irony. I am struck, for instance, by how Stan — who devoted thousands of pro bono hours to help build legal institutions in China — would caution his disciples (and they were many here and abroad) to have a healthy skepticism about all institutions anywhere and to never forget the need for tempering the operation of institutions with humaneness and a generous spirit.
Stan, too, was an imaginative and meticulous scholar, with Bird in a Cage being the best study of legal change in China during final 25 years of the 20th century.
We send our appreciation and love to the remarkable Judith, Sarah and James. May his memory be a blessing.
Rachel Stern (UC Berkeley)
As we all know, Stanley did a huge amount in his career to further the study of Chinese law in the United States. He will rightfully be remembered for Bird in A Cage, which is a modern classic, and his other contributions to the field.
What I will remember the most, however, is how Stanley’s treated others, especially younger scholars like me. From our first lunch at Cesar (one of Stanley’s long-time favorite haunts) when I was a graduate student through the China law gatherings at his house when I was junior faculty, Stanley never stopped showing interest in my work and in me personally, and working to create a sense of fellowship among those of us interested in Chinese law.
That combination of intellectual curiosity and interpersonal warmth is a legacy to pay forward.
Edith Terry (Cotton Tree Advisors)
Stanley was among the small number of western legal professionals who lived in Beijing in the early 1980s and virtually willed Chinese civil and commercial law into being. Everyone seemed to live in the Peking Hotel, including myself, and to know each other. For many years after, I would follow Stan’s career and works vicariously, as well as those of his daughter Sarah in the China field. He was funny, smart and congenial. When the history of this early period of post-revolution Chinese law is written, Stanley will be among its luminaries.
Stanley hired me fresh out of law school and immediately became both a mentor and a close friend. I’ll sorely miss his friendship as well as his sartorial and scholarly style. His instincts were impeccable and his inquisitive nature was boundless. While I collaborated with him occasionally in his scholarly pursuits, most of our professional time was spent together as practicing lawyers trying to understand China’s vexing legal system (I had never heard the word “vexing” before I met Stanley!). He always insisted that our work product be precise, insightful and well written. A memo had to “sing” before I could send it to a client.
Consistent with his appreciation of prose that sings, Stanley loved music. He enjoyed all genres of music — be it classical, jazz, rock, Cajun, zydeco or reggae — and some of my most cherished memories of Stanley were our travels to music festivals and concerts in California, Louisiana and Finland. Stanley also loved California’s northern coast, where he and Judith hosted my family and so many friends at their home on the doorstep of the Pt. Reyes National Seashore.
I’ll be thinking of Stanley whenever I raise a glass of champagne; he would expect nothing less.
Don Wallace (Georgetown Law School)
As I wrote and told Judith, after Stanley’s death, he was both a serious scholar and a man whose address to life was serious.
I first met Stanley when we were both briefly associates at Paul, Weiss in the early 60’s and Stanley was about to embark on his career in Chinese law. It took some guts, and the results have been formidable. May his soul rest in peace.