Jingzhi Chen

Jingzhi Chen is a DPhil student at Balliol College, Oxford. Her doctoral studies are generously supported by the Law Foundation at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. She is supervised by Professor Ruth Chang. 

She has previously studied law at the University of Oxford (MPhil), China University of Political Science and Law (Master in Legal Theory), and Beijing Institute of Technology (LLB.). Her MPhil study at Oxford was kindly sponsored by the David and Jayne Paterson Education Trust. 

Her academic interests lie in political and legal philosophy. In her DPhil thesis, she mainly explores two relevant problems regarding the state’s right to rule: (1) If a state is to be legitimate, what kind of, or a combination of, specific rights one must have? (2) Under what conditions, if any, would a state be justified in wielding the minimal right to rule? She attempts to explain in what sense states could play a role in shaping individuals’ identity, thus establishing the state’s legitimacy on individuals’ associative obligations as a member of a political community.