Weilin Xiao is a J.S.D. candidate at Yale Law School, where he earned his LL.M. degree in 2019. Prior to coming to Yale, Weilin completed his LL.B. and first LL.M. degree at Peking University. He spent the 2019-2020 academic year as a Visiting Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo, under the International Dissertation Research Fellowship awarded by the Yale MacMillan Center. In 2021, Weilin’s conference paper, “Expansion and Restriction: A Comparative Study of Modernization of Family Laws in Japan and China,” was awarded the Colin B. Picker Graduate Prize by the American Society of Comparative Law.

Weilin's academic interests include family law and property, with a focus on comparative and sociological approaches. His J.S.D. dissertation concerns the divergent approaches toward modernizing family laws in Japan and China. Through a comparative perspective, Weilin seeks to answer why Japan and China coordinated legal transplantation and their own customary family laws differently, and how such choices shaped the modernization of those countries in the twentieth century.

Doctoral Committee
Professors Taisu Zhang (Chair), James Q. Whitman (Reader), Paul W. Kahn (Reader)

Education
LL.M., Yale Law School (2019)
LL.M., Peking University (2018)
LL.B., Peking University (2016)

Contact Information
weilin.xiao@yale.edu