On the afternoon of September 21, the 171st session of the School of Law's "Lihu Rule of Law Forum" was held in Room 103 of Minglv Building. Selin Esen, Professor at Ankara University Faculty of Law and President of the International Association of Constitutional Law, delivered a lecture titled The Rule of Law Beyond the Global North: Constitutional Innovations from the Global South. Mo Jihong, Executive Vice President of the Constitutional Law Research Committee of the China Law Society, presided over the event, with nearly 100 faculty members and students in attendance.

Prof. Esen distinguished the "thin" (formal-procedural) and "thick" (substantive) conceptions of the rule of law, and drew on cases such as Turkey's legal system transformation, South Africa's "Ubuntu" ethics, Ecuador's rights of nature, and New Zealand's Māori customary law to illustrate the constitutional innovations of the Global South in "legal pluralism and the constitutionalization of pre-colonial values." She also introduced how southern constitutions recognize economic and social rights, neuro-rights and the rights of nature, together with judicial mechanisms such as India's "basic structure" doctrine and Colombia's "unconstitutional state of affairs" theory, arguing that the Global South is narrowing the gap in knowledge production between the Global North and the Global South.