Talking directly (议正言辞) is a podcast I make on the legal history of East and West. It tries to hold ancient Rome and twenty-first-century China within a single thread—the long journey toward justice, and the way law is fought over, patched, and rewritten between the state and the individual, between custom and rule.

Search for “议正言辞” on Xiaoyuzhou or Apple Podcast , or click any episode title below to listen. Episodes are in Chinese.

Episodes

07 Shi Jianqiao and the Assassination of Sun Chuanfang

2026-07-05 · 25 min

In 1935, Shi Jianqiao shot and killed the warlord Sun Chuanfang in Tianjin to avenge her father. From the trial to the Nationalist government’s eventual pardon, this episode looks at the tension between the ethics of filial revenge and modern law.

06 U.S. Birthright Citizenship: Total Victory or Temporary Truce?

2026-07-02 · 27 min

Around the Supreme Court’s ruling on Trump’s Executive Order 14160, this episode traces birthright citizenship through executive order, injunctions, and litigation—and asks how durable the victory really is given the fragile majority beneath it.

05 Gao Mingxuan and Chinese Criminal Law: Four Elements vs. Three Tiers

2026-02-27 · 26 min

Starting from the life of the criminal-law scholar Gao Mingxuan, this episode examines the debate between the “four-element” and “three-tier” theories of criminal constitution, and how it shapes the line between the state’s penal power and citizens’ rights.

04 How Did the Japanese Come to Terms with Defeat? A 32-Year Fight Against the Government

2026-02-26 · 33 min

The historian Ienaga Saburō’s thirty-two-year lawsuits against Japan’s Ministry of Education over textbook revisions. When a state tries to rewrite the memory of its own war, how does an individual defend academic freedom and the historical record?

2025-07-04 · 26 min

Beginning with the Fourteenth Amendment and Wong Kim Ark, this episode walks through the constitutional dispute over the Trump administration’s challenge to birthright citizenship, and the doctrinal contest between territorial and personal jurisdiction.

02 A Survival Manual for Tang-Dynasty Justice: A Case that Sparked the Rites-vs-Law Debate

2025-06-11 · 22 min

A revenge case under Empress Wu Zetian brings out the dilemma between Confucian filial duty and state law. The episode covers the Tang judicial system, its appeals mechanisms, and the debate between Liu Zongyuan and Chen Zi’ang over rites and law.

01 From the First Emperor to the Revival of Roman Law: State-Building Meets the Rule of Law

2025-06-09 · 14 min

Drawing on Fukuyama’s The Origins of Political Order, this episode asks why China built a strong centralized state so early yet never moved toward the rule of law and accountability, while Europe, starting later, went further down that road.