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Lawrence J. Liu

Associate Professor of Law

Lawrence J. Liu will join Washington University in St. Louis School of Law as an Associate Professor in summer 2026. He is a comparative law and politics scholar, with a focus on state-society relations in China and the United States. His research pays particular attention to the actors who engage and occupy legal institutions, such as lawyers, interest groups, administrative adjudicators, and judges. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship and mixed-methods research tools, he seeks to understand how law and politics shapes these actors’ decisionmaking processes and to identify implications for international trade, administrative law, and Chinese law. His work has appeared in outlets that include Michigan Journal of Environmental and Administrative Law, Yale Journal of International Law, Law & Social Inquiry, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, and The China Quarterly.

Lawrence is currently a fellow at the Neukom Center for the Rule of Law at Stanford Law School. He holds a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from the University of California, Berkeley, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and an A.B., magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. He clerked for the Honorable Andrew D. Hurwitz on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

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  • Education
    • Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley (Jurisprudence and Social Policy), 2025
    • J.D., Yale Law School, 2022
    • M.A., University of California, Berkeley (Jurisprudence and Social Policy), 2018
    • A.B., Princeton University, 2016
  • Areas of Expertise
    • International Trade Law
    • Chinese Law and Politics
    • Administrative Law
    • Legal Profession
    • State-Society Relations
    • Empirical Legal Studies
  • Publications

    SSRN Authors Page

    • Independence through Judicialization: The Politics Surrounding Administrative Adjudicators, 1929–1949, 13 Mich. J. Env’tl & Admin L. 522 (2024).
    • The Rules of the (Belt and) Road: How Lawyers Participate in China’s Outbound Investment and Infrastructure Initiatives, 46 Yale J. Int’l L. Online 168 (2021).
    • State-Adjacent Professionals: How Chinese Lawyers Participate in Political Life, 247 China Q. 793 (2021) (with Rachel E. Stern).
    • The Good Lawyer: State-Led Professional Socialization in Contemporary China, 45 Law & Soc. Inquiry 226 (2020) (with Rachel E. Stern).
    • Religion and Judging on the Federal Courts of Appeals, 14 J. Empirical Legal Stud. 716 (2017) (with Sepehr Shahshahani).

    Working Papers

    • Opening the Tariff Toolkit: The Demand for Administrative Trade Remedies in the United States.
    • Other works in progress can be found on my personal website.
  • Honors and Awards
    • Law & Society Association 2021 Article Prize for “The Good Lawyer: State-Led Professional Socialization in Contemporary China.”
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