“Public Interest Lawyers: Heroes or Troublemakers?”

公益律师，英雄还是刁民

Southern Weekend, 2009-05-20

An investigative article on public interest lawyers explores the short history and current state of public interest law in contemporary China through interviews with prominent lawyers such as Zhou Litai, Hao Jinsong and Yan Yiming. Despite often losing their cases or never getting them accepted by the courts, their work has brought public attention to issues such as employment discrimination, migrant worker's rights, shareholder protections and government corruption. Except for the few financially successful, public interest lawyers continually struggle with funding difficulties and a general lack of support from the wider legal profession, which often sees them as troublemakers. Due to procedural restrictions on legal standing, current interest litigation is primarily limited to four areas: “consumer protections, citizen's equal rights, environmental protection and educational rights.”