About Macau Law Review

Macau Law Review

Macau Law Review is a Chinese-language legal academic journal edited and published by the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies under the Faculty of Law of the University of Macau. The University of Macau lists it among the academic journals published by the university and states its purpose plainly: the journal aims to promote jurisprudence research and to establish and enrich the legal theory system of the Macao Special Administrative Region. It is, in other words, a journal built around the legal order of Macao itself, written primarily in Chinese and produced by the law faculty of Macao's public university.

That institutional position matters. Macao's legal order has Portuguese roots, operates in Chinese and Portuguese, and has developed since the establishment of the Macao SAR under the Basic Law. A journal published by the Faculty of Law's Institute for Advanced Legal Studies therefore sits at the point where scholarship on that order is produced, debated and preserved, rather than merely reported from outside.

Origins in 2006 and the earlier title

The journal began in 2006. As the Faculty of Law itself recorded in the first volume of its newer English-language journal in 2024, the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies began publishing the Chinese journal The Series Book of Legal Science in 2006, and that publication was later renamed Macau Law Review. The present title is therefore not the title under which the journal started, and its history should be read as a continuation of the 2006 series rather than as a separate, younger publication.

The 2006 start also places the journal within a longer publishing tradition at the faculty. The same faculty account notes that the Faculty of Law started publishing the Boletim da Faculdade de Direito in 1997. Macau Law Review thus emerged from a faculty that was already publishing legal scholarship, and it gave that scholarship a Chinese-language journal devoted to jurisprudence and legal theory.

Publisher and institutional home

The journal is edited and published by the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies under the Faculty of Law of the University of Macau, according to the university's official page on academic journals published or edited by UM. The University of Macau is based on Avenida da Universidade in Taipa, Macau, and its Faculty of Law is the institutional home of both the institute and the journal.

Editorial leadership is documented in the university's more recent reporting. At the seminar marking the journal's twentieth anniversary in June 2025, the event was moderated by Zhao Guoqiang, described by UM as an adjunct professor of the Faculty of Law and editor-in-chief of Macau Law Review. Tong Io Cheng, dean of the Faculty of Law, was identified on the same occasion as chair of the journal's editorial committee. Those two roles — an editor-in-chief drawn from the faculty and an editorial committee chaired by the dean — show how closely the journal remains tied to the faculty that publishes it.

Aims and subject scope

The university's stated aims for the journal are to promote jurisprudence research and to establish and enrich the legal theory system of the Macao SAR. Its focus, as UM describes it, is academic papers on Macao law, the laws of mainland China, the laws of neighbouring regions, the laws of EU countries, Portuguese-speaking countries and common law countries, and academic papers on international law, legal philosophy and legal history.

That scope is unusually wide for a journal centred on one small jurisdiction, and it reflects Macao's own legal position. Macao law cannot be studied in isolation from mainland Chinese law, from the Portuguese legal tradition from which much of it derives, from neighbouring jurisdictions, or from the wider Lusophone and common-law worlds with which Macao scholars regularly engage. The journal's remit mirrors that network, ranging from doctrinal work on Macao's codes to comparative, philosophical and historical scholarship.

Contents and the shape of an issue

The structure of a recent issue shows how that scope is organised in practice. The Faculty of Law's page for the 2023 No. 2 issue, identified as Serial No. 52, lists invited articles, a column on empirical legal studies, peer-reviewed articles, a Macau legal studies section and a Macau legal trends section, together with downloadable cover pages and the whole book.

Among the contributions listed for that issue were Albert H. Y. Chen on ruling Hong Kong in accordance with law and the implementation of the National Security Law in Hong Kong, a peer-reviewed article by Rostam J. Neuwirth and Li Yi on the regulation of artificial intelligence, work on the systematisation of Constitution and Basic Law education in the special administrative regions, a study of other normative acts of the Macao SAR, an analysis of the executive order system in the Macao Basic Law, and an introduction to the amendment of Macao's law on safeguarding national security. The mixture is characteristic: Macao-specific institutional questions sit alongside Hong Kong and mainland topics and alongside subjects, such as artificial intelligence regulation, that belong to legal debate everywhere.

Revamp and the move to four issues a year

In December 2022 the university announced that Macau Law Review had been revamped. UM said the journal was revamped to address development needs based on its key features, with a view to strengthening external collaboration and optimising article sources. The updated journal, the university reported, had received submissions from leading scholars in China, and the quality of its articles had attracted considerable attention in the country's academic community.

The most concrete change in that announcement concerned frequency. Starting in 2023, UM said, the publishing schedule would change from three issues a year to four issues a year, in an effort to make greater contributions to the development of the legal sector of Macao. An increase from three to four issues is a substantial expansion for a specialist Chinese-language law journal, and it signalled that the revamp was intended to increase both the volume and the regularity of the journal's contribution.

Electronic circulation and collaboration with Peking University

The journal's circulation beyond print was the subject of earlier university reporting. UM reported that Macau Law Review had entered into a collaboration agreement with Peking University's legal database, in an attempt to explore more channels of circulation, to convert paper publications into electronic format, and to strengthen exchange between the academic and publishing sectors in Macao and mainland China.

The same report illustrates the journal's reach into wider Chinese legal scholarship: a paper included in Macau Law Review, UM said, had received a research achievement award from Cheng Kung University's College of Social Sciences. Taken together, the database collaboration and that award describe a journal whose work was already circulating, and being recognised, outside Macao well before the 2022 revamp.

The twentieth-anniversary seminar in 2025

On 14 June 2025 the Faculty of Law held a seminar at UM in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of Macau Law Review, presented by the journal's editorial board, to discuss the role of legal journals in facilitating Macao's integration into national development. The university's account names the participants in detail. The seminar was moderated by editor-in-chief Zhao Guoqiang, and speakers included Tong Io Cheng, dean of the faculty and chair of the journal's editorial committee; Yu Xingzhong, chair professor of the faculty and director of UM's Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences; Chen Su, a member of the academic division of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and editor-in-chief of Chinese Journal of Law; and Su Jinyan, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Evaluation Studies.

Attendees included editors from leading legal journals in mainland China and academic journals in Macao. UM reported that they gave full recognition to Macau Law Review's growing academic influence and offered insights and advice for its future development, and that they expressed hope that the journal would help promote the development of legal studies in Macao and contribute to the development of the rule of law in the Guangdong-Macao In-Depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The anniversary was therefore treated not simply as a celebration of longevity, but as a discussion about what a Macao law journal should do next.

Place in Macao legal scholarship

Macau Law Review occupies a specific niche. It is a Chinese-language journal, published by a law faculty institute, whose stated task is to build the legal theory system of the Macao SAR while publishing comparative work on mainland China, neighbouring regions, Europe, the Portuguese-speaking world and common law countries, as well as international law, legal philosophy and legal history. Few journals combine a single-jurisdiction mission with that breadth of comparative reference, and the combination is a direct consequence of Macao's own legal history and present position.

Its record since 2006 — a change of title from The Series Book of Legal Science, a database collaboration with Peking University, a revamp in 2022, a move to quarterly publication from 2023, and a twentieth-anniversary seminar in 2025 attended by editors of leading mainland journals — is the record of a journal that has steadily widened its channels and its ambitions while keeping its original Macao-centred purpose.

Publication details

Macau Law Review is published in Macau by the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, Faculty of Law, University of Macau. It began in 2006 under the title The Series Book of Legal Science and was later renamed. It published three issues a year before moving to four issues a year from 2023. Its editor-in-chief, as reported by the University of Macau in 2025, is Zhao Guoqiang, and the chair of its editorial committee is Tong Io Cheng, dean of the Faculty of Law. The University of Macau presents the journal on its official academic journals page, which is the authoritative public listing for the title.