If the legal reform initiated in the late Qing (1901-1911) that went through the Republican period was the first in 20th-century China, then the 1952 Legal Reform Movement, less than three years after the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC), was the second major reform in mainland China. Not only did this reform condemn and jettison many long-held orthodox legal principles such as the “rule of law,” “judicial independence,” and “equality before the law;” it also officially set the model and rhetoric of the legal systems in the Mao Zedong era (1949-1976) in spite of several efforts of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to restore basic legal principles after the reform.

Given the great significance of the 1952 legal reform, it is quite surprising that the topic has been understudied by scholars. Most Western scholars have barely mentioned it. Chinese scholars have paid more attention to it, but, apart from minor differences in their writing styles and presentations, all of their arguments are very similar and fraught with tension. On the one hand, they all reference CCP's official accounts to justify the legal reform. On the other hand, they voice almost identical criticisms of its adverse consequences. For instance, Li Yusheng praises the 1952 legal reform that “exterminated the influence of the old legal system.” But he also acknowledges that the legal reform inevitably contained some flaws such as lowering the quality of judges and denouncing some principles of the rule of law.