Yutian An is an Assistant Professor at UCLA School of Law and will teach Criminal Law, Comparative Law, and Chinese Law. Her research lies at the intersection of criminal law, administrative law, and comparative law. Specifically, her research examines how legal systems structure state-building activities, sociopolitical legitimization, and administrative entrenchment in both authoritarian and democratic regimes, with a focus on criminal law institutions. She also explores the interactions between legal frameworks and the institutional dynamics of local law enforcement, particularly in shaping police conduct and related bureaucratic behavior. Additionally, she evaluates the sociopolitical implications of judicialization of politics, especially in authoritarian regimes. Her research method is primarily empirical, and she seeks to produce useful theoretical insights for comparative law and politics through the empirical findings. 

An received her B.A. in Politics and Economics, magna cum laude, at Mount Holyoke College, and her J.D. at Yale Law School, where she served as managing editor of the Yale Journal of International Law. She is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Politics at Princeton University. Her Ph.D. dissertation is titled: Legal Authoritarianism: Law, Police, and Courts in China. An’s publication has appeared in Yale Law and Policy Review.

An is a member of the New York bar and has previously worked as litigator at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York. She is also qualified to practice law in China after passing the country’s national legal exam. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.