With support from APSA (NSF) DDRIG

In cooperation with Ling Dai at Information Resources, Inc (IRI), Chicago

To create the Administrative Lawsuits Dataset, Ling and I parsed more than a million administrative ruling texts that were published in a digital archive, China Judgement Online (wenshu.court.gov.cn) since 2014. In 2014, it became a legal obligation for every court in China to publish written judgments in this archive, which is operated by the Supreme People’s Court. This archive provides the most complete collection of court cases in China among all extant sources.

The administrative Lawsuits Dataset presents variables that will be of interest to political scientists. Above all, the most significant contribution of this dataset would be the Type of Dispute, the variable that categorized the issue areas of administrative disputes into 22 types that well-reflect China’s political context (e.g. Family Planning, Stability Maintenance, Requisition). Other variables include but are not limited to (1) the dates when the case was filed, (2) closed, and (3) published; (4) the name of the court; (5) the name of the government party; (6) court and government locations; (7) the administrative level of the government party; (8) name of the non-government party; (9) whether the non-government was represented by a lawyer or not; (10) third-party; (11) type of non-government party (prosecutor, corporation, or ordinary citizen); (12) trial result.

Special thanks to John Zhuang Liu at the University of Hong Kong, who provided the raw text data. Equal thanks to Alicia Liu and Michael Huang at UChicago for their RA work.