On June 9, 2022, the China-EU School of Law (CESL) Lecture Series on “Supervising and Writing of Master's Thesis” was successfully held online. Professor YI Jun gave the speech, and all CESL double master’s students from the 2021 intake participated in the lecture.

In this lecture, Prof. YI talked about the writing techniques of a legal academic thesis from four aspects. These were the core issues, topic selection, literature collection, and specific technical issues.

First of all, Prof. YI argued that the core writing techniques of a legal academic thesis lies in innovation, which is considered the life of an academic paper. Innovation is difficult. Researchers can innovate by looking for problems that have not been studied before, or by opening up new research areas, by adopting new research methods other than the standard analysis, by using new literature, and by coming up with new ideas or insights. Secondly, the topic selection of a legal academic thesis should reflect the author's consciousness about a problem. Authors must skillfully play to the strengths and avoid the weaknesses, and try to focus on small topics and then deepen those topics. Importantly, the determination of the topic is inseparable from a lot of reading and thinking. Thirdly, when collecting literature, researchers should exhaust relevant subject literature as far as possible, and try to use authoritative literature and novel literature, but try not to rely upon secondary and online literature. Prof. YI also suggested that students should take advantage of their foreign language skills and opportunities to study abroad to collect and use foreign language materials on the topic they are studying. In the end, Prof. YI talked about the specific technical issues of the title, structure, annotation, language, exposition, argumentation, and research position of the legal academic thesis based on rich writing examples. His lecture advice was logical and detailed.

This lecture has a strong guiding significance for students to write their academic thesis. At the end of the lecture, Prof. YI encouraged the students to write more excellent works.

Written by: YU Zhen, CESL double master from 2021 intake
Photographed by: WANG Dazhong, CESL double master from 2021 intake
Translated by: WANG Bijia, CESL double master from 2021 intake