The Institute of Constitutional Law (ICL), our university’s long-standing strong research base, was founded in 1953 by Professor Duansheng Qian, a famous constitutional scholar and the first Dean of The Beijing College of Political Science and Law, the predecessor of the CUPL. The ICL was formerly named the Teaching and Research Section of State Law, and in 1984 renamed as the Teaching and Research Section of Constitutional Law. The section was officially rebranded as the ICL in 2002.

The ICL comprises 7 professors, 5 associate Professors, and 2 assistant Professors.

The ICL is responsible for teaching and research in relation to a number of subjects, including Constitutional Law, Foreign Constitutional Law, Hong Kong and Macau Basic Laws, Comparative Constitution, Human Rights of Minority Groups, Chinese Constitutional History, and Western Constitutional Culture. Apart from master programmes, the CUPL is eligible to provide training to doctoral and post-doctoral students majoring in Constitutional Law in 2003 and 2007 respectively.

Every year the ICL holds international conferences and other academic activities, such as the “Sino-German Constitutional Forum” and “Sino-French Constitutional Forum”, which are of great importance at home and abroad. Over the past few years, a number of state and provincial research projects headed or participated in by the members of the ICL have borne positive results. These academic efforts that have great scholarly implications have made contributions to the overall plan of building up a rule of law state. On the whole, the research fields of the ICL are legal sociology, History of Constitutionalism, Rule of Law at Local Levels, Hong Kong and Macau Basic Laws, Social Security, Basic Rights, Legislative Rights, Enfranchisement, Rights Protection the Minority, Party Regulations, British, American, and German Constitutions, and Comparative Constitution.