Lawrence J. Liu is a comparative law and politics scholar, with a focus on state-society relations in China and the United States. His research pays particular attention to the actors who engage and occupy legal institutions, such as lawyers, interest groups, administrative adjudicators, and judges. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship and mixed-methods research tools, he seeks to understand how law and politics shapes these actors’ decisionmaking processes and to identify implications for international trade, administrative law, and Chinese law. His work has appeared in outlets that include Michigan Journal of Environmental and Administrative Law, Yale Journal of International Law, Law & Social Inquiry, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, and The China Quarterly.

Lawrence will join Washington University in St. Louis School of Law as an Associate Professor in summer 2026. He holds a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from the University of California, Berkeley, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and an A.B., magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. He clerked for the Honorable Andrew D. Hurwitz on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. For more information about Lawrence and his research, please visit his personal website.