In March 2006, Jerome Cohen of NYU School of Law met with 11 Chinese human rights lawyers to discuss a strategic response to the latest antilawyering edict by the Ministry of Justice and the state-controlled All China Lawyers Association. Most took the view that they should do the best they could working within the system.
“Gao Zhisheng took a different view,” says Cohen, who has been active in Chinese legal reform for half a century. Gao said that rule of law could never be achieved until the monopoly on power of the Chinese Communist Party is ended.
