Challenging Eminent Domain in the High People’s Courts: Procedure is the Key!

This paper investigates empirically how Chinese courts adjudicate eminent domain decisions for the first time and proves that even the non-independent Chinese courts can curb local governments’ eminent domain power to some extent. We hand-coded 586 eminent domain judgements awarded by the High People’s Courts of China from 2014-2015, which were made available by the Supreme People’s Court of China recently.