The first level discipline founded in 1950 is the first higher legal education institution officially established after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Since its foundation, it has helped establish a batch of political and first level disciplines and teachers, and has supplied new teaching materials as well as teaching formats. For all of its remarkable contributions to the county's legal education, it has been called “the cradle of Chinese jurists” and “the machine tool of Chinese legal education”. In recent years, it has adhered to the people-oriented principle, focusing on academics construction and the improvement of teacher quality. It aims to train top legal talent. Currently, as the host institution for the Convening of the Board of Law under the State Council's Academic Degree Committee and the Chairman and the Secretariat of National Guidance Commission on Higher Legal Education under the Ministry of Education, it is a pre-eminent legal education center in China. It is becoming one of the first-rank first level disciplines in the world. In recognition of its great achievements, it was awarded the National Merit Banner of May 1st in 1998, a national privilege and the only one of its kind ever awarded to a higher education institution.

The advantages and special features that The First level discipline site mainly have are as follows:

(a) The Discipline is experienced and well-balanced, A protocol of the Discipline System has been Set up

The First level discipline has already been authorized to grant the Ph.D. degree In the postgraduate professional catalogue, 10 second class disciplines, except military law, have established master’s degree and Ph.D.degrees (including the environmental resources Ph.D program established in 2004). The program contains 3 national key disciplines, 2 important research bases of humanities and social science under the Ministry of Education. (there are only 6 research bases of national important law research bases in China ). It is among the first batch of experimental units which are authorized to grant Jurist Doctorate degrees.Through the approval of State Department, it set up China's first flow station of Jurist Post-doctorate degrees. The Criminal jurisprudence and the Civil and Commercial Jurisprudence have always been ranked first class nation-wide.

(b) Teaching is excellent. Its Formation is reasonable, because of which a sustainable development structure has been achieved.

At present the first level discipline has 108 full-time teachers and researchers, among of which 78 have Ph.D. degrees, accounting for 70 percent of the total. There are 50 professors and doctoral advisers, 41 among which are under the age of 55. The teachers under the age of 50 who have obtained a Ph.D. degrees comprise more than 80% of the total. There are not only pre-eminent senior professors, such as Prof. Zeng Xianyi, Prof. Gao Mingxuan, Prof. Xu Chongde, Prof. Sun Guohua, Prof. Jiang Wei who have earned a strong reputation both at home and abroad, but there are also young and middle-aged scholars such as Prof. Wang Liming, Prof. Han Dayuan, Prof. Yu Jinsong who play important roles on different nation-wide disciplines. Three young professors have been awarded the honor of "The National Excellent Young-aged Teacher's Prize" by the Ministry of Education three times in a row. In the first round there were three winners from Beijing of the “Ten Outstanding Middle-aged and Young Jurist" award as elected by the Chinese legal association. All are young professors from our School (one on the job Ph.D candidate has been included). And 2 professors have earned the distinction again in the second and the third round respectively.

(c) Research and Teaching Material Compilation Achievements are Prominent.

Since the year 2001, a total of 1540 treatises have been published, 540 of which are core periodicals. It achieved 44 national class awards and 48 provincial class awards. The research budget of the first level discipline is more than 35 million RMB, 110 items among which are national class research items (include all kinds of topics of the Ministry of Education), with a budget of more than 13 million RMB. There are 37 international cooperation research items, with a budget of more than 10 million RMB. The China Law Reports has been jointly edited each year by RUC First level discipline and the Supreme People's Court, and is published in mainland China , Hong Kong and Taiwan . Its English version has been published by Butterworth’s Press and has exerted extensive influence both home and abroad. It won first place for the Prize of Outstanding Works of Law Science from 1983-1993 awarded by State Administration of Press and Publication, and the Special Class Prize of 3rd Session of Outstanding Achievements in Philosophy and Sociology of Beijing. The first level discipline wrote and edited the series of 70 teaching materials of the 21st century. Fourteen of these core course teaching materials achieved the first prize for National Excellent Teaching Material of Ministry of Education.

(d) Actively participating in the Lawmaking Activity, Providing Consultation for high level decisions.

This discipline has a long-term cooperation with the National People’s Congress, Legal Bureau of the State Department, Supreme People's Court, Supreme People's Prosecuting Court , Judiciary, Public Security Department, and other legislative and judiciary departments. A few of its teachers have participated in the drafting and making of Constitution, Criminal Law, General Rules for Civil law, Contract Law, etc, and they are continuing to give important advice to other law-making work, e.g. Civil Code, Property Law, Electronic Commerce Law, etc. They still actively participate in the drafting of the Supreme People's Court judicatory explanation. The discipline leads to participation in legal study activity for the leaders of the central government. Six professors ( Prof. Sun Guohua, Prof. Xu Chongde, Prof. Gao Mingxuan, Prof. Guo Shoukang, Prof. Long Yifei, Prof. Wang Liming) have given lessons to the Central political Bureau of CCP and the Standing Committee of NPC 10 times altogether, a feat which has attracted wide praise.

(e) Becoming A Main Information Database for Chinese Legal Education

The first level discipline has a modern material evidence technology lab funded by the UN, a China Law Information Center , a library with a collection of more than 100 thousand books, and publication the Jurists' Review, a major law journal issued publicly at home and abroad. Among them, the China Law Information Center is a National 211 Project program, which has established the one and only Chinese judicial case example database, providing the case example information database and legislation information database of the whole country. Its China Civil and commercial law website( http://www.civillaw.com.cn/ ), is established a relatively complete database for thesis, law lecturing, law and regulation, judicial explanation, and so on, is the symbol of information and networking.

(f) Becoming an important communication window for the world on legal education.

After many years of hard work, the first level discipline has made remarkable progress on academic exchanges and cooperation with the world, obtaining a worldwide influence. In succession it held the first Sino-America distinguished deans of law schools, the first Sino-European distinguished deans of law schools' joint meeting, the Asian law education reform and development forum. Most notably it has held 21st century forum for law school deans of the 100 world famous universities which at the same time is a celebration and conference for the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Law School of Renmin University, and a series of other unprecedented international meetings. It established the "Lord Chancellor's speaking platform", the "Grand prosecuting attorney' speaking platform", the "famous jurists' speaking platform" etc. These meetings and forums are not only regarded as an milestone in Chinese law education reform, but more importantly they have made the world know the great achievements China has made on rule of law, legal system construction, and modern law education since China' opening reform. Moreover from the past few years, the first level discipline has been holding a "Chinese law summer class" for jurists from all over the world. It has also held the "European law training project", "American law summer class", and the "postgraduate class on Chinese law in Hong Kong district", while making contributions to the legal education exchanges with other countries.

The first level discipline will continue to go forward, and keep pace with the world, in order to make new contributions to the development of legal education and to build a socialist country under the rule of law.