Legal Review - Issue 4

Author: Su Li
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: In 1959, when Professor Coase was not yet well-known, he wrote the article "The Federal Communications Commission," which later became renowned in academia. After reading it, the editor of the Journal of Law and Economics, Professor De Alessi, believed that although the article was wrong, it was wrong in an interesting way, and therefore decided to publish it in its entirety without any changes. One of the conditions was that Coase, who was then teaching at the University of Virginia, had to go to the University of Chicago to give an explanation for the article (with travel expenses and accommodation paid by the University of Chicago). One night, at De Alessi's home, Coase debated with nine famous scholars from the University of Chicago until midnight. Everyone agreed that Coase was wrong, and even Coase himself began to doubt himself. At this moment, the leader of the Chicago School, the later Nobel laureate in Economics, Friedman, suddenly had an epiphany. He stood up and took over Coase's argument. Under his "machine-gun assault," all the opponents fell, leaving only Coase standing. Later, another opponent of Coase in this debate, the later Nobel laureate in Economics, Stigler, summarized the ideas Coase presented in the article as the famous "Coase Theorem" and expressed them in an extremely concise manner—even though Coase may not have fully agreed with this expression.
To tell these two academic anecdotes, it is only to demonstrate: the development of academia requires scholars to engage in equal, sincere criticism and debate, to support and appreciate each other, including an aesthetic or intuitive appreciation of truth and falsehood, and sometimes to require new interpretations and expressions. Moreover, even small issues can spark academic creativity and perhaps lead to more substantive discussions. And all of these are still relatively lacking in the Chinese legal academia. Therefore, at the time of this journal's redesign, we once again express our pursuit: in order to promote the prosperity and healthy development of Chinese law and to ensure the inevitable coming of the great revival of Chinese culture, we must persistently engage in serious academic criticism, especially by expanding more criticism of Chinese academia. Not all efforts yield results, but not all efforts are without results. We simply want to reach a place called "the future."