Ji Li

John & Marilyn Long Professor of US-China Business and Law
Ji Li

Expertise:

Chinese Law and Politics, International Business Transactions, Comparative Law, Contracts, Empirical Legal Studies

Background:

Professor Li joined UCI Law in July 2019 as the John S. and Marilyn Long Professor of U.S.-China Business and Law. Prior to this appointment, he was a Professor of Law and a Zhuang Zhou Scholar at Rutgers University, where he also served as a member of the Associate Faculty of the Division of Global Affairs.

Professor Li received his Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University and his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an Olin Fellow in Law, Economics, and Public Policy. After law school, he worked for several years at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York.

Professor Li’s teaching and scholarship cover a broad range of topics, including Chinese law and politics, international business transactions, contracts, comparative law, and empirical legal studies. He has published two books with Cambridge University Press: Negotiating Legality (2024) and Clash of Capitalisms (2018), both of which examine how Chinese multinational companies, including those owned by the Chinese state, adapt to U.S. legal and regulatory institutions. During the 2018-2019 academic year, Professor Li was in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is currently working on two book projects that investigate the interactions between China and the international legal order, as well as the ways transnational legal actors are coping with the U.S.-China geopolitical rivalry.

(Log in to view full course descriptions in the UCI Law Course Catalog)

  • Negotiating Legality: Chinese Companies in the US Legal System (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Studies in Law and Society, 2024)
  • “Superpower Rivalry and the Global Compliance Dilemma,” 45 University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law 891 (2024)
  • “Chinese and Western Perspectives on the Rule of Law and their International Implications,” (with Karen Alter) The Cambridge Handbook of China and International Law (ed., Ignacio de la Rasilla & Cai, Congyan, 2024)
  • “Superpower Rivalry and the ‘Modernization’ of Foreign Investment Risk Review,” (with Ruonan Tang) 2023 University of Illinois Law Review 461 (2023)
  • “The Evolving Rule of Law with Chinese Characteristics and Its Impacts on the International Legal Order,” 8 UC Irvine Journal of International, Transnational and Comparative Law 151 (symposium issue, 2023)
  • “Chinese Immigrant Legal Mobilization in the U.S.: the 2020 Executive Ban on WeChat and Civil Rights in a Digital Age,” (with Judy Wu) 30 Asian American Law Journal 51 (2023) 
  • “Dispute Resolution Choices Among Chinese Companies in the United States: Some Preliminary Data and Analyses,” (with Carrie Menkel-Meadow) 28 Harvard Negotiation Law Review 295 (2022)
  • “In Pursuit of Fairness: How Chinese Multinational Companies React to U.S. Government Bias,” 62 Harvard International Law Journal 375 (2021)
  • “Meeting Law’s Demand: Chinese Multinationals as Consumers of U.S. Legal Services,” 46 Yale Journal of International Law Online 72 (2021)
  • “’Going Out’ and Going In-House: Chinese Multinationals’ Internal Legal Capacity in the United States,” 46 Law & Social Inquiry 487 (2021)
  • The Clash of Capitalisms? Chinese Companies in the United States (Cambridge University Press, 2018)
  • “Overcoming Liabilities of Origin: Human Resource Management Localization of Chinese Multinational Corporations in Developed Markets” (with Ouyang et al.) Human Resource Management__ (forthcoming 2019)
  • “The Power Logic of Justice in China,” 65 American Journal of Comparative Law 95 (2017)
  • “’Strangers in a Strange Land’-Chinese Companies in the American Tax System,” 68 Hastings Law Journal 503 (2017)
  • “The Leviathan’s Rule by Law,” 12 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 815 (2015)
  • October 2024
    Book talk on "Negotiating Legality," UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy
  • July 2024
    Chinese Immigrant Lawyers in the U.S., International Legal Ethics Conference, University of Amsterdam 
  • June 2024
    Foreign Investment Screening in China and the U.S., 2024 National Business Law Scholars Conference, UC Davis School of Law (June 2024)
  • April 2024
    Asia Law Institute at NYU Law School (April 4), Cornell Law School (April 8), Duke Law School (April 11)