The book provides an understanding of how China's legal system works in the context of the political reality in today's China. This collection of articles by prominent legal academics and practitioners provides valuable insights into the roles lawyers have played in China's legal system and the constraints they have encountered since China's legal profession was restored in the early 1980s.

From a "barefoot lawyer" protesting coercive family planning in Shandong to a hunger-striking campaigner for religious freedom in Beijing to public interest advocates who forge rights consciousness through consumer protection, China's legal practitioners have contributed to the radical transformation of China's legal and social landscape over the past 20 years. Suppressed, beaten, imprisoned, disbarred, China's human rights lawyers have continued their struggle, becoming in the process not only pioneers in their profession, but also contributors to larger social progress in China.