美中全球议题对话项目

Ethan Michelson (Indiana University) will present his work building on his 2022 book, Decoupling: Gender Injustice in China’s Divorce Courts. In order to assess both the generalizability of judicial decision-making behavior and the impact of China’s 2015 Anti-Domestic Violence Law, he has updated his findings by analyzing over 100,000 court decisions from all 31 provincial-level units between 2017 and 2024. Michelson will assess the extent and nature of discrepancies between courtroom trial proceedings and what judges write about them in over 3,000 divorce cases for which both written decisions and trial video recordings are available (from 25 provincial-level units between 2019 and 2024). 

Michelson's research applies Harry Frankfurt’s concept of “bullshit” to judges’ routine strategies of distorting and even fabricating law as pretexts for disaffirming claims of domestic violence, for omitting from their written decisions compelling evidence submitted in support of such claims, and even for omitting domestic violence claims altogether. Michelson will argue that bullshitting complements lying and gaslighting as a source of power wielded by judges in China’s family courts.