Twisted Borrowings and Failed Exports: The Chinese Republic and the Early Structure of American Transnational Legal Networks

This paper explores the early 20^th century precedent of American transnational legal networks that arose around the establishment of the Chinese Republic after the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. The idea that American legal institutions could and were being exported to China at this time was embraced by both the increasingly internationalized American legal profession and select Chinese legal reformers

These legal networks were greatly influenced by the growing standardization of the American legal profession at the turn of the century which had created the notion that there was a specific set of private and public institutions that provided the foundations of a more unitary notion of “American law.” At the same time, the personal and institutional relationships between American lawyers and their Chinese counterparts were heavily influence by, if not wholly dependent on, the missionary infrastructure that shaped Sino-American relations of the era and which had long promoted the idea that China was the exemplar of America’s new, non-colonial foreign influence.

Ultimately, the unidirectional structure of these networks failed to create a productive dynamic for both liberal American and Chinese lawyers seeking to understand the ongoing political turmoil of the new Republic and generate effective reform strategies therein. Many Chinese attempts to learn from the American legal experience were as warped by the export presumption embedded in these transnational networks as were American attempts to influence Chinese legal development.

Nevertheless, the structure of these early transnational networks not only persisted throughout the first half of the 20^th century in Sino-American relations, but would become foundationally influential on American engagement with foreign legal systems throughout the 20^th century.