Communication Law Review Volume 14, Issue 1 1 From Edicts to Human Flesh Searches: Legal Communication and Practice in China's New Media Environment Rya Butterfield, Nicholls State University Nathan Crick, Texas A&M University Abstract During his stay in China from the outset of the May Fourth Movement in 1919 to 1921, American philosopher John Dewey wrote about the tension between customary, statute, and edict law which respectively derived their powers from long standing tradition, from state-sanctioned legal principle, and from the narrow exertion of force. Even though contemporary China is very different from the China Dewey observed, the development of legal communication and practice remains continuous with his account. Dewey predicted that China would develop its own path by integrating customary law into a more transparent and flexible system. New information and communication technologies have provided the outlet for many of the contemporary critical thrusts that are reshaping communicative institutions in contemporary Chinese society. This essay suggests that the increase in these technologies is making Dewey’s prophecy something closer to a reality. The result is a novel exhibition of customary law through the power of social media in ways that can appear both emancipatory, as a voice of the people, and oppressive, as a reorientation to the intolerance of customary law. estern media frequently portrays Chinese commoners as having a follower mentality shaped by state propaganda that makes them rule abiding or gullible to a manipulative authoritarian government. Take, for example, the New York Times article about the anti-Japan riots that were spurred on by recurrent ownership disputes over a set of small islands (Shanker and Johnson 2012). The article referenced the way the China Daily, the primary media organ of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) touted the riots as demonstrations of the Chinese people’s “patriotic fervor” (Shanker and Johnson 2012). It gave readers the sense that Party officials could be involved in the riots, and at the very least, they were doing little to calm the riots. Stories about the riots were released in Western outlets at the same time as news about the disgraced leader Bo Xilai whose wife, Gu Kailai, was accused of murdering W