All Prussian

More than two decades has passed since the beginning of the mass-scale program of "law popularization" among "all educable citizens" in 1986. 20 years' law popularization effort has enhanced citizens' legal awareness and improved their discourse ability in the game of stakeholders. The positive meaning of the program, therefore, is undeniable. However, there still exist various problems and official opinion and public opinion on the law popularization program differ to some extent. In this paper, using Foucault's concept of knowledge/power as the analytical tool, the author views law popularization under the background of societal transformation, centers on the analysis of governmental power(authority) and focuses on the study of the relationship between government and citizens during the process of law popularization. Through the description and analysis of the whole process of initiation, implementation and development, the author comes to the rudimental conclusion: universal law education is undertaken mainly under the power of the state, which embodies a form of mobilization imposed upon the society by the state, a means of social control, or an effort of the government to reconstruct legitimacy through truth regime. As a result, though law popularization does have a hue of enlightenment of rule of law, it is not the enlightenment in the real sense. Instead, it is an approach or strategy the country adopts to adapt to the societal transformation and is politically and ideologically tinted. Upon this basis, the author reflects on the way of legal construction led by the state.