On the afternoon of February 21, 2017, the first lecture in the Jurisprudence Lecture Series, organized by the Department of Jurisprudence of CASS Law Institute, was successfully held in the lecture room of the Institute. The lecture, entitled “The Conceptualization of the Rule of Law: a Comparative Study Based on the Practice of Assessment of Indices of the Rule of Law”, was given by Mr. Ran Jinfu, an associate research fellow of CASS Law Institute, presided over by Mr. He Hairen, a research fellow at the Institute, and attended by over a dozen researchers and graduate students of the Institute. In the lecture, Mr. Ran first introduced the traditional concepts of the rule of law from a historical perspective. Through the analysis of the understandings of the rule of law by leading Chinese and western scholars, Mr. Ran pointed out that under the traditional mode, it is stressed that the rule of law is a kind of quality of law and different scholars have similar ideas and viewpoints on the concept of the rule of law. However, such ideas and viewpoints are only vague explanation of the concept of the rule of law that have not yet reached the level of conceptualization required by empirical study. He then gave an introduction to the basic methods of empirical legal study and explained in detail the concept, tasks and objectives of conceptualization of the rule of law. Next, Mr. Ran analyzed the main practices of assessment of rule of law indices in China and other countries. Finally, he expressed his own opinions on the concept, the subjects of assessment, and the standard of assessment of rule of law indices.