He received Ph.D. from the law school of Peking University in 2004, and was a postdoctoral fellow in the department of sociology at Peking University from 2005 to 2007. His research fields include sociology of law, economics of law and Constitutional law. The issues he is researching now are changes within the Chinese court’s xinfang over the past thirty years; non-local lawyers in Chinese criminal cases, confiscation in Chinese criminal cases, disenfranchisement of political rights in Chinese criminal cases, and changes within the CCP's Political and Legal Committee. Apart from academic research and teaching, he is also the founder and editor of the journal Law and Social Science.