© 2006 American Bar Foundation. 75 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Oxford, UK LSI Law & Social Inquiry 0897-6546 © 2006 American Bar Foundation. winter 2006 31 1 Original Article Beyond Global Convergence LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY Beyond Global Convergence: Conflicts of Legitimacy in a Chinese Lower Court Sida Liu This article examines the localization of global legal institutions by the case study of a lower court in China’s Hebei Province. Using data on the changes in the formal organizational structure, the composition of personnel, the case docket, and case dispositions in this court between 1978 and 2000, the author demonstrates that global legal institutions have survived in China’s judicial practice by adapting to indigenous social and political demands and becoming localized. The day-to-day judicial work of Chinese lower court judges is only loosely coupled with their formal roles, and the judicial decision-making process is contingent upon the historical origin of the judiciary, administrative influence, and the legal consciousness of local communities. The underlying reason for the localization process is the complexity of legitimacy at the local level. Global prescription, economic pressure, political influence, and local social order all require certain types of legitimacy from the legal institutions. As a result, beyond the symbolic functions of global convergence, the practical meanings of the legal institutions are socially constructed in the judicial practice to reconcile the conflicts between global and local sources of legitimacy. Sida Liu is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Sociology, University of Chicago. This article is developed from the author’s research project at Peking University School of Law and then written at the University of Chicago. I would like to thank Andrew Abbott, Terry Clark, Robert Dingwall, Ethan Michelson, Kwai Hang Ng, Elena Obkhova, William Parish, Dingxin Zhao, and six anonymous manuscript reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. In particular, both Robert Dingwall and Ethan Michelson consistently made great contributions during the longtime revision of the article. Melissa Kew devoted outstanding editing efforts for an earlier draft. My project at Peking University benefited much from the lectures and advice of He Weifang, Su Li, Li Meng, Zhao Xiaoli, and Qu Jingdong. I extend my special gratitude to Gao Wei, my former colleague at Peking University School of Law. Without his extraordinary efforts my data collection would have been impossible. Please direct all correspondence to sidaliu@uchicago.edu.