Matthew S. Erie (J.D., Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Studies and Associate Research Fellow of the Socio-Legal Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. Professor Erie’s interdisciplinary work combines law and anthropology to expand the theoretical bases and empirical borders of comparative law, with a particular focus on Chinese law, Islamic law, and Asian law, more generally. Specifically, he has written on Chinese domestic law (e.g., property law, constitutional law, and ethnic and religious policy) and international law (e.g., dispute resolution, conflict of laws, anti-corruption law, and investment law). His work has either appeared in or is forthcoming in such journals as the Harvard International Law Journal, Virginia Journal of International Law, American Journal of Comparative Law, Law and Social Inquiry, and American Ethnologist. His first book, China and Islam: The Prophet, the Party, and Law (Cambridge University Press, 2016), is the first ethnographic study of the relationship between sharia and state law in China. His current research project “China, Law and Development,” funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant (€1.5 million), examines China’s approach to building cross-border order through international economic law and the regulatory regimes of developing host states.

Professor Erie previously held academic positions at Princeton University and New York University Law School, and he was a visiting scholar at the National University Singapore Law Faculty. He practiced law at Paul Hastings LLP in New York and Beijing, and is a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and Co-Chair of the American Society of International Law’s Asia-Pacific Interest Group.

BOOK

2016. China and Islam: The Prophet, the Party, and Law (Cambridge University Press). Sample chapter available here.

SPECIAL ISSUES (Organized and/or Edited)

Forthcoming. “China’s Global Capital and the Coronavirus: Views from Comparative Law and Regulation.” Asian Journal of Comparative Law.

2021. “China and the International Legal Order.” 46 Yale Journal of International Law & 62 Harvard International Law Journal. Joint Special Issue. See here and here.

2021. “Global Labs of International Commercial Dispute Resolution.” American Journal of International Law Unbound. Co-organized with Pamela K. Bookman, edited by Anthea Roberts. 115. Click here.

2020. “Legal Dimensions of Chinese Globalization.” Chinese Journal of Comparative Law. 8(2): 281-434. Click here.

SELECTION OF ARTICLES

Forthcoming. Zhongguo falü he fazhan (中国法律和发展) [Chinese Law and Development], Falü he shehui kexue (法律和社会科学) [Law and Social Sciences]. [SSRN]

Forthcoming. “Civilization on Pause.” Asian Journal of Comparative Law. [SSRN]

Forthcoming. “American Legal Exceptionalism and China’s Dream of Legal Cosmopolitanism.” University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law.

Forthcoming. “The Soft Power of Chinese Law.” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. [SSRN] 

Forthcoming. “China and Islamic Finance: Past, Present, and Future.” Transnational Dispute Management. Part of special issue on “Islamic Finance and Dispute Resolution.” Click here.

2022. “The Normative Anthropologist.” Alabama Law Review. 73: 803-821. Click here. [SSRN]

2021. With Thomas Streinz. “The Beijing Effect: China’s ‘Digital Silk Road’ as Transnational Data Governance.” NYU Journal of International Law & Politics. 54(1): 1-92. Click here.

2021. With Ha Hai Do. “Law and Development Minus Legal Transplants: The Example of China in Vietnam.” Asian Journal of Law & Society. 8(2): 372-401. Click here.

2021. With Sida Liu. “The Forms and Architects of China’s International Legal Order.” Yale International Law Journal Online. 46: 47-71. Click here.

2021. “China and International Comparative law: Between Social Science and Critique.” Chicago Journal of International Law. 22(1): 59-70. Click here.

2021. With Monika Prusinowska. “The Future of Foreign Arbitration in the People’s Republic of China: Current Developments and Challenges Ahead.” Asia Pacific Law Review. 28(2): 259-278. Click here.

2021. “Chinese Law and Development.” Harvard International Law Journal. 62(1): 51-115. Click here.

2021. With Pamela K. Bookman. “Experimenting with International Commercial Dispute Resolution.” American Journal of International Law Unbound. 115: 5-10. Click here.

2020. “Introduction to Special Issue ‘Legal Dimensions of Chinese Globalization’: China and Global Health Governance.” Chinese Journal of Comparative Law. 8(2): 281-303. Click here.

2020. “The New Legal Hubs: The Emergent Landscape of International Commercial Dispute Resolution.” Virginia Journal of International Law. 60(2): 225-298. Click here.

2019. “Indo-Pacific Legal Infrastructure: A China Perspective.” Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting. 113: 374. Click here.

2019. “Anticorruption as Transnational Law: The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, PRC Law, and Party Rules in China.” American Journal of Comparative Law. 67(2): 233. Click here [SSRN].

2019. “Shariʿa as Taboo of Modern Law: Halal Food, Islamophobia, and China.” Journal of Law & Religion. 33(3): 390-420. Click here.

2018. “The Traveling Waqf: Property, Religion, and Mobility Beyond China.” Islamic Law and Society. 25(1-2): 121-155. Click here [SSRN].

2016. “Shariʿa, Charity, and Minjian Autonomy in Muslim China: Gift-Giving in a Plural World.” American Ethnologist. 43(2). 311-224. Click here [SSRN].

2015. “Muslim Mandarins in Chinese Courts: Dispute Resolution, Islamic Law, and the Secular State in Northwest China.” Law & Social Inquiry. 40(4): 1001-1030. Click here [SSRN].

2014. “Introduction to ‘Islam in China/China in Islam.” Special Issue of Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review. 12:1-12. Click here.

2014. “Defining Shariʿa in China: State, Ahong, and the Post-Secular Turn.” Special Issue of Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review. 12:88-117. Click here.

2012. “Property Rights, Legal Consciousness, and New Media in China: The Hard Case of the ‘Toughest Nail-House in History’.” China Information, 26 (1): 34-58. Click here [SSRN].

2009. “Legal Education Reform in China Through U.S.-Inspired Transplants.” Journal of Legal Education, 59 (1): 60-96. Click here [SSRN]. Chinese translation reprinted as “中国法律教育改革–受美国教育启发后的移植 Zhongguo falü jiaoyu gaige: shou Meiguo jiaoyu qifa hou de yizhi.” 法学教育研究 Faxue jiaoyu yanjiu (Research on Legal Studies Education), 8: 363-400. 2013.

2007. “China’s (Post)Socialist Property Rights Regime: Assessing the Impact of the Property Law on Illegal Land Takings,” Hong Kong Law Journal,  37 (3): 919-949. Click here [SSRN].

SELECTION OF CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOOKS

Forthcoming. “A Comparison of Inbound and Outbound Investment Regulatory Regimes in China: Focus on Environmental Protection.” China and the WTO: 20 Years On, edited by Henry Gao, Damian Ross, and Ka Zeng. Cambridge University Press.

Forthcoming. “The Problem of Method in the Study of Transnational Dispute Resolution.” Comparative and Transnational Dispute Resolution, edited by Shahla Ali.

2019. “Custom in the Archive: The Birth of Modern Chinese Law at the End of Empire.” Empire and the Social Sciences: Global Histories of Knowledge, edited by Jeremy Adelman. Bloomsbury Academic. Click here.

2017. “The Afterlife of Property: Affect, Time, Value.” Legalism: Property and Ownership, edited by Hannah Skoda, Tom Lambert, and Georgy Kantor. Oxford University Press, 89-114. [SSRN].

BOOK REVIEWS

Forthcoming. “Mapping the Cosmopolitan Legal Imaginary: Recent Chinese Scholarship on Dispute Resolution.” American Journal of Comparative Law.

2022. “Is there a Chinese ‘Code of Capital?'” Review of Katharine Pistor’s The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (Princeton University Press, 2019). Law & Social Inquiry. 47(2): 720-726. Click here.

2020. Book review of Law and Society in China, Io Lo, Vai (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar). Modern Law Review 84: 194-197. Click here.

2015. Book review of Resolving Land Disputes in East Asia: Exploring the Limits of the Law, eds. Fu Hualing and John Gillespie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). China Quarterly 224: 1101-1102. Click here.

2014. Book review of Shanghai Gone: Domicide and Defiance in a Chinese Megacity, Qin Shao (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013). China Information, 28(1): 111-112. Click here.

2012. Book Review of Rectifying God’s Name Liu Zhi’s Confucian Translation of Monotheism and Islamic Law, James D. Frankel (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2011). Journal of Islamic Law and Society 19(3): 316-319. Click here.

JOURNALISTIC ARTICLES AND OP-EDS

2021. “A Brief History of Pakistan-China Legal Relations.” Made in China Journal. Click here.

2021. “Archipelagos of Chinese Law.” European Chinese Legal Research Hub. Click here.

2021. With Thomas Streinz (second author). “China’s Influence in Global Data Governance Explained: The Beijing Effect.” Machine Lawyering. Click here.

2021. With Thomas Streinz (first author). “Understanding China’s Growing Influence in Global Data Governance.” USALI Perspectives. Click here.

2020. “BRI vs. COVID-19.” “China, Law and Development, Research Brief, March 24. Click here.

2020. “The China Question: International Commercial Courts between London and Beijing.” Commercial Courts Report 2020. Click here.

2019. “Introducing the ‘China, Law and Development’ Project: Analyzing China’s Impact on Cross-Border Legal and Regulatory Order.” Oxford Business Law Blog. Sept. 25. Click here.

2019. With Peter Corne. “China’s Mediation Revolution? Opportunities and Challenges of the Singapore Mediation Convention.” Opinio Juris. Aug. 28. Click here.

2019. “Update on the China International Commercial Court.” “China, Law and Development” Research Brief. June 30. Click here.

2019. “Update on the China International Commercial Court.” Opinio Juris. May 13. Click here.

2019. “Viewing the “Arrangement Concerning Mutual Assistance in Court-ordered Interim Measures in Aid of Arbitral Proceedings by the Courts of the Mainland and of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region” as a Window onto the New Legal Hubs.” Conflict of Laws.net. April. 8. Click here.

2018. “The China International Commercial Court: Prospects for Dispute Resolution for the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’.” ASIL Insights, August 31. Click here.

2016. “In China, Fears of ‘Creeping Sharia’ Proliferate Online.” Foreign Policy, September 15. Click here. Arabic version here.

2016. “Legal Entrepreneurs in the Halal Industry: The Case of Sharia in China.” SHARIAsource. August 19. Click here.

2016.  “China’s Halal Constitution: ‘Islamic’ Legislation Stirs Debate at the PRC Engages the Muslim World.” The Diplomat. May 27. Click here.

2014. “Whither Ethnic Autonomy in China?” Anthropology News. April 25. Click here.

2009. With David Livdahl, Jacelyn Khoo, and Henry Li. “Setting Up International Non-profit Organizations in China,” China Business Review. May-June. Click here.

2008. “中国，美国总统大选，与宪法 Zhongzu, meiguo zongtong daxuan, yu xianfa” (Race, the US Presidential Election, and the Constitution), 法制日报 Fazhi Ribao (Legal Daily). May 3. (In Chinese). Click here.

ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES

2014. “China.” Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Law, Editor, Jonathan Brown. Click here.

MULTI-MEDIA

2016. Editor of Online Symposium for SHARIAsource entitled “Is there an Islamic Law Basis for the Authority of Female Clerics among Chinese Muslims?” featuring commentaries by four Chinese clerics and scholars. Click here. 

2014. Photo Essay “Reimagining the Silk Road.” Special Issue of Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review. Click here. BOOK

2016. China and Islam: The Prophet, the Party, and Law (Cambridge University Press). Sample chapter available here.

SPECIAL ISSUES (Organized and/or Edited)

Forthcoming. “China’s Global Capital and the Coronavirus: Views from Comparative Law and Regulation.” Asian Journal of Comparative Law.

2021. “China and the International Legal Order.” 46 Yale Journal of International Law & 62 Harvard International Law Journal. Joint Special Issue. See here and here.

2021. “Global Labs of International Commercial Dispute Resolution.” American Journal of International Law Unbound. Co-organized with Pamela K. Bookman, edited by Anthea Roberts. 115. Click here.

2020. “Legal Dimensions of Chinese Globalization.” Chinese Journal of Comparative Law. 8(2): 281-434. Click here.

SELECTION OF ARTICLES

Forthcoming. Zhongguo falü he fazhan (中国法律和发展) [Chinese Law and Development], Falü he shehui kexue (法律和社会科学) [Law and Social Sciences]. [SSRN]

Forthcoming. “Civilization on Pause.” Asian Journal of Comparative Law. [SSRN]

– Introduction to Chinese Law