In 1935, Shi Jianqiao shot Sun Chuanfang in a Buddhist hall in Tianjin to avenge her father, then scattered leaflets and surrendered. From her decade-long pursuit of revenge through three levels of Republican courts and a Nationalist pardon, this episode asks how traditional filial duty fared under modern criminal law.
On June 30, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6–3 to strike down Trump's Executive Order 14160 and reaffirm birthright citizenship. This episode follows the dispute from the order and preliminary injunctions through class-action strategy and the final judgment, reads the justices' separate opinions, and asks how secure the victory really is.
Gao Mingxuan, a towering figure in Chinese criminal law, died on February 26, 2026, aged 98. Beginning with his role in drafting the PRC's first criminal code, this episode unpacks the long debate between the four-element and three-tier theories of crime—and asks how state penal power should be exercised and citizens' rights protected.
What can one person do when the state uses textbooks to reshape memory of war? This episode follows historian Saburō Ienaga's three lawsuits over 32 years against revisions to accounts of Japan's wartime aggression, the Nanjing Massacre, and Unit 731, examining the boundaries among state screening, academic freedom, and responsibility for war.
Focusing on birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment, this episode starts from the Supreme Court's then-recent procedural ruling, Wong Kim Ark, and the doctrine's history. It traces how the Trump administration challenged the principle through an executive order and litigation, and examines the contest between jus soli and jus sanguinis.