Laureate of 2024 Li Buyun Law Prize: Han Dayuan

Han Dayuan is Wu Yuzhang Chair Professor at Renmin University of China, a professor and a Ph.D. supervisor at Renmin Law School. He is also a Changjiang Scholar awarded by the Ministry of Education and a member of the Hong Kong Basic Law Committee of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.

Professor Han serves as Honorary President of the China Association of Constitutional Law of the China Law Society, Executive Vice President of the China Association for Legal Education of the China Law Society, Vice President of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, Vice President of the China Audit Society, a member of the Food Safety Expert Committee of the State Council, a member of the Expert Advisory Committee of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, and a member of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Constitutional Law.

In 1984, Professor Han Dayuan obtained his LLB from Jilin University. In 1987, he earned an LLM from Renmin University of China, where he subsequently began his teaching career. In 1994, he received his Ph.D. in Law from Renmin University of China. His main research areas are Chinese constitutional law, comparative constitutional law, and Hong Kong and Macau Basic Laws. Professor Han has authored several monographs, including The Drafting Process of the 1954 Constitution, The Drafting Process of the 1949 Common Program, Studies on Asian Constitutionalism, Foundational Theories of Constitutional Law, Constitutional Logic of the Right to Life, and Constitution and Basic Law: History, Text, and Reality. He has also edited works such as A History of Chinese Constitutional Theory (two volumes) and 70 Years of Constitutional Development in the PRC. He led the translation project of Constitutions of the World (four volumes), and has coauthored and edited major textbooks, including Chinese Constitutional Law, Comparative Constitutional Law, and Foreign Constitutions. Professor Han has published over 200 articles in Chinese academic journals such as Social Sciences in China, Chinese Journal of Law, and China Legal Science, and more than 20 articles in international academic journals.

Throughout nearly 40 years of his academic career, Professor Han has remained rooted in China’s constitutional practice and dedicated himself to the cause of the rule of law. He has played an instrumental role in advancing constitutional governance and human rights protection. He pioneered the research on constitutional interpretation and enhanced the independence and integrity of constitutional law as a discipline; he deepened the research on constitutional history and documented the great processes of constitutional drafting and implementation in the People’s Republic; he expanded the horizons of comparative constitutional law and presented China’s rich constitutional practice and theories to the global audience; he advanced the research on Hong Kong and Macau Basic Laws and contributed to the development and improvement of the “One Country, Two Systems” system. Since the beginning of his teaching career, Professor Han has been devoted to nurturing young scholars for China’s constitutional law research community. Besides his professional research, Professor Han has also been active in promoting constitutional education for the public, especially among primary and secondary school students, and played a significant role in the establishment of the National Constitution Day. Prof. Han Dayuan has long been committed to fostering academic exchanges between Chinese and foreign legal communities. He has also made enduring contributions to the development of legal education in China, with a particular focus on the importance of humanism in legal education.

Professor Han has been recognized with numerous honors, including the Top Ten Outstanding Young and Middle-aged Jurists Award in 1999, the National Teaching Master Award in 2006, and the 2017 Harvard Law School Project on Disability Award for Creative Contributions to Human Betterment. In 2019, he was named the Annual Rule of Law Figure in China. He has also been awarded honorary Doctor of Law degrees by the University of Lapland in Finland and the University of Bergen in Norway.