Decoupling: Marital Violence and the Struggle to Divorce in China1

An analysis of adjudicated divorce decisions in two Chinese provinces reveals the extent to which and the reasons why Chinese courts subvert the global legal norms they symbolically embrace. In China, uncontested no-fault divorces are readily attainable outside the court system. Courts, by contrast,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American journal of sociology 2019-09, Vol.125 (2), p.325-381
Main Author: Michelson, Ethan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abused women
Courts
Divorce
Domestic violence
Legal norms
Litigation
Marriage
Penetration
Provinces
Refugees
Victims
Women
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:An analysis of adjudicated divorce decisions in two Chinese provinces reveals the extent to which and the reasons why Chinese courts subvert the global legal norms they symbolically embrace. In China, uncontested no-fault divorces are readily attainable outside the court system. Courts, by contrast, granted divorces in fewer than half of the cases they adjudicated. Despite an abundance of formal legal mechanisms designed to provide relief to victims of marital abuse, a plaintiff’s claim of domestic violence did not increase the probability a court granted a divorce request. Chinese courts’ highly institutionalized practice of denying first-attempt divorce petitions and granting divorces on subsequent litigation attempts disproportionately impacts women and has spawned a sizable population of female marital-violence refugees. These findings carry substantive and theoretical implications concerning the limits and possibilities of the local penetration of global legal norms.
ISSN:0002-9602
1537-5390
DOI:10.1086/705747