Untempered power: Krygier’s visceral aversion and China's notable activists

Martin Krygier grounds his commitment to the rule of law in a visceral aversion to untempered power. This essay deploys these concepts in a portrait of ways China's notable lawyer activists confront power in this most consequential site of struggle at the present historical moment. Drawing heavily on the words of lawyers in the vanguard of defense of basic legal freedoms, the essay sketches briefly how China's notable activist lawyers construe the "uncontrol, unpredictability, and unrespect" of unbridled power as it is exercised by the insatiable monopoly of China's Communist Party, its failures to erect checks and balances when restraint of power is most critical, its deployment of criminal procedure law to legitimize the abuse of power, its reliance on untamed institutions of a police state, and its disempowering of civil society as a fundamental buttress for rule of law. In the spirit of Krygier, the essay concludes with lawyers' vision of tempered power through rule of law in China.