In order to further improve the quality of postgraduate dissertations and guide students in dissertation writing, the School of Law of Southeast University organized a series of dissertation writing training lectures. Following the special lecture brought by Prof. Song Hualin, How to Find and Read Legal Literature? After receiving a warm response, at 14:30 on November 8, 2023, Yao Wei, full-time editor of Politics and Law and researcher of Institute of Law, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, was invited by the Law School of Southeast University to bring a lecture on the topic of How to Choose Topics for Law Dissertations? by combining online and offline. The lecture was organized by Professor Yao Wei of the Law School of Southeast University. The lecture was hosted by Mr. Meng Hongzhi, professor and doctoral supervisor of Southeast University School of Law, with Mr. Yang Dengfeng, professor and doctoral supervisor of Southeast University School of Law, and Mr. Liu Qichuan, professor, doctoral supervisor and secretary of the Party Committee of Southeast University School of Law, as the talkers. The lecture attracted more than 500 law teachers and students from different regions and schools to learn together, and the response was enthusiastic. Before the beginning of the lecture, Prof. Meng Hongzhi of Law School of Southeast University expressed his warm welcome and heartfelt thanks to Mr. Yao Wei. Mr. Yao Wei also expressed his great pleasure to share his experience about topic selection.

At the beginning of the lecture, Mr. Yao recommended three guiding books for law dissertation writing, namely Methods of Law Dissertation Writing (by Liang Huixing), Law Dissertation Writing (by He Haibo), and Literary Mind and Legal Meaning: Six Lectures on the Thinking of Law Writing (edited by Yan Tian), which guided students to know law dissertation writing in a systematic way. After that, Mr. Yao emphasized the importance of thesis topic selection, thinking that topic selection is not only the formulation of the topic, but also the starting point of academic planning. As an editor of core journals, Mr. Yao told us that when reviewing the dissertations, 80% of the articles can be screened out by the topic selection, which proves that the journals attach great importance to the topic selection.

Then, Mr. Yao broke down the topic of this lecture and firstly asked the question What is a law thesis?. The first question was What is a law dissertation?. Mr. Yao firstly clarified the concept of jurisprudence, which is not a natural science, but a normative and practical science. The foundation of jurisprudence lies in the doctrine of law. The core work of jurisprudence is to typify complex norms, establish a unified knowledge system and thinking framework, and set up a paradigmatic argumentation step for analysis, so as to provide a unified and standardized concept and structure for the application of norms, and thus provide certainty and guidance for the solution of practical problems. The object of jurisprudence is right, and the conclusion of jurisprudence is legal and illegal.

Immediately after that, Mr. Yao Wei distinguished the law thesis from other literary styles, arguing that the law thesis is first of all an academic work, not a case study, a news commentary, a disciplinary review, a theoretical article, or a report on a subject, but a specialized and systematic study, in which academic propositions, academic discourse, and theoretical frameworks must be present. After distinguishing law dissertations from other genres, Mr. Yao Wei made further division of law dissertations, including dissertations and academic journal papers. According to him, dissertation is an examination of ability while academic journal paper is required for selection.

After clarifying what is a law dissertation, Mr. Yao Wei talked in detail about the method of selecting topics for law dissertations. According to Mr. Yao Wei, the topic of a law dissertation is responsible for five major tasks: determining the research object, establishing the propositional hypothesis, configuring the research methodology, designing the dissertation outline, and formulating the research plan. The sources of choosing the topic include: following the hot spot in the legal academy, the tutor's designation or suggestion, heartfelt love, based on career planning, research foundation and sudden inspiration. Specific paths for topic selection include: legal cases, life practices, normative conflicts, theoretical controversies, historical perceptions, and regional comparisons. Requirements for topic selection include: 1. the object of research must be normative; 2. normative analysis method is the main one, and other analysis methods are only auxiliary; 3. there must be a core proposition. The topic selection must match the thinking characteristics of the legal profession, including: normative features, systemic features, inductive-based, hierarchical or stratified, typological thinking, precise thinking, conservative thinking, thinking for differences, academic imagination and comparative borrowing thinking.

Dissertation topic selection should pay attention to: finding problems from legal practice and refining important academic topics; clearly recognizing the specific position of the topic in the disciplinary system; trying to exhaust the core literature and fully grasping the current status of research; conceptual processing and scope definition of the research object according to the needs; choosing applied or theoretical topics according to one's ability and characteristics; determining the difficulty of the topic according to the constraints; Try to find a topic that can make a progressive argument; the topic should be able to accommodate a sufficient number of theoretical arguments; the topic should be at least one or two of new questions, new materials, new methods and new conclusions. The taboos of the dissertation topic selection include: do not select the topic without practical value; do not follow the hotspots, especially do not follow the legislative items; do not follow the political discourse, and do not cause political controversy; do not carry the pursuit of values other than academics; do not choose the issue with too few theoretical controversies, even if the significance is too great; and the topic itself should not have common sense errors. The steps of selecting a topic are divided into: 1. basic reading + participation in legal practice + inspiration; 2. preliminary topic + framing the object of study + the formation of propositional hypotheses; 3. directed collection of literature + general reading of all the literature + intensive reading of the key literature; 4. convinced that the topic is of great significance + to confirm the establishment of the hypothetical propositions + to find ways to substantiate the propositions; 5. to write the opening report + to listen to the views of the tutor, classmates, and subject experts to validate the report + adjusting the opening report. Adjust the report.

At the end of the lecture, Mr. Yao Wei expressed his feelings about the thesis topic selection, thinking that the thesis topic selection seems to be the initial part of the thesis writing and the kick in the pants after the author's academic inspiration breaks out, but in fact, it is the concentration of the author's academic accumulation and theoretical vision, and the dozen or so words condense their wisdom and hard work, which becomes the key to the success or failure of the thesis writing, and it must be given to the author. It is the key to the success or failure of writing, so it must be given great attention and careful handling.

In the talk session, Prof. Yang Dengfeng thanked Mr. Yao Wei for his wonderful lecture, and thought that the content of Mr. Yao Wei's lecture gave him great inspiration, especially about What is a legal problem?, What is a legal paper? What is the topic of law dissertation? These two questions. Prof. Yang Dengfeng pointed out that Mr. Yao Wei proposed that legal research should be matched with the method of legal thinking, which was profound and insightful, and he hoped that Mr. Yao could publish a monograph on the method of writing legal essays in the future for everyone to learn.

Prof. Liu Qichuan once again expressed his thanks to Mr. Yao Wei for coming and expressed his understanding of this lecture. According to him, the content of this lecture is the method of topic selection. Mr. Yao's explanation was very inspiring. Prof. Liu Qichuan encouraged the students to think positively, practice positively, learn well from Mr. Yao's lecture, and discover more new and meaningful problems.