A constitutional contingency: A reply to Zhaoxin Jiang

Abstract

The thesis of the article by Zhaoxin Jiang, “The Untold Leader of Judicial Review: China’s Constitutional Court (1948–71) and the Innovative Constitutionalism,” is highly innovative, and the materials it uses are invaluable to understanding the Council of Grand Justices. Nonetheless, several key contentions of the article are not fully supported by—or indeed are contradicted by—the existing evidence. This Reply provides some competing analyses and interpretations of the three topics in the article: (i) the characterization of the Council at its founding; (ii) the interactions between Chiang Kai-shek and judicial elites; and (iii) the performance of the Council in Taiwan.