Abstract
Over the past thirty years, Chinese legal studies have followed a bumpy and twisting road. After ten years of political chaos created by Lin Biao and the “Gang of Four,” there has been a unanimous call across the country to learn from that painful experience, strengthen socialist democracy and perfect the socialist legal system. Inspired by the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Party Congress, legal studies are already in a relatively lively state. It may be both beneficial and neccessary to review the past, extract some lessons from our experience and explore certain issues that have been the subject of past debate.