Abstract: This review analyzes Nie Xin’s Chinese Justice: Tradition and Modernization as the first comprehensive study of the transformation of Chinese judicial institutions from 1911 to 1949. It argues that Nie’s central contribution lies in treating Republican judicial reform as a process of institutional reconfiguration rather than a simple transplantation of Western legal forms. The book reconstructs modern Chinese justice through three interrelated dimensions: the differentiation of judicial authority within the Judicial Yuan; the organization of adjudicatory power through criminal-civil division and appellate hierarchy; and the practical innovation of justice in civil service discipline, administrative adjudication, election litigation, and judicial publicity. By tracing these institutional arrangements and practices, Nie shows how legal modernity was made through professional expertise, normative control, procedural design, and the daily operation of courts and quasi-judicial bodies. The review also emphasizes the contemporary significance of this history. Problems concerning the function of the highest court, the burden of appellate review, the unification of legal application, guiding cases, judicial interpretations, and judgment publication all have structural precedents in the Republican period. Nie’s book therefore contributes not only to Chinese legal history, but also to a broader understanding of how judicial institutions are constructed under conditions of political instability, administrative scarcity, and social demand for justice.