Lawrence J. Liu

Lawrence J. Liu is a Rule of Law Fellow at Stanford Law School’s Neukom Center for the Rule of Law, set to join Washington University in St. Louis School of Law as an Associate Professor in summer 2026. His research focuses on comparative law and politics, particularly state-society relations in China and the United States, with an emphasis on legal professionals, administrative adjudicators, and policy-making processes in trade and authoritarian legal systems.

• Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy (2025), University of California, Berkeley
• J.D. (2022), Yale Law School
• M.A. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy (2018), University of California, Berkeley
• A.B. (2016), Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs

His interdisciplinary work integrates mixed-methods research to analyze how legal institutions shape decision-making in administrative law, international trade law, and Chinese legal politics. He examines the role of lawyers, interest groups, and judges in policy formation, with a particular interest in state-society mediation and empirical legal dynamics.

His publications address judicial independence in U.S. administrative law, legal professionalism in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and religious influence in federal appellate rulings. These works have appeared in Michigan Journal of Environmental and Administrative Law, Yale Journal of International Law, The China Quarterly, and Law & Social Inquiry.

• 2021 Law & Society Association Article Prize for 'The Good Lawyer: State-Led Professional Socialization in Contemporary China'

Lawrence has taught courses on quantitative law & social science, authoritarian legal systems, and the sociology of law. His ongoing projects include a bottom-up analysis of U.S. administrative trade remedies and comparative studies of legal practice in China and the U.S.