THE Shanghai Bar Association was a professional organization sanctioned by the Republican government from the beginning, and thus a legally established association (fatuan) or public association (gongtuan). The status of professional association was essential for the legitimacy of the organization, especially during the Nanjing Decade, as the government strictly regulated social associations and relentlessly suppressed real or perceived subversive organizations in society. The Shanghai Bar Association did start out for professional purposes, as shown in Chapter 8. Since the Regulations on Lawyers of 1912 and 1927 prohibited bar associations from undertaking matters beyond judicial affairs, the Shanghai Bar's activities mostly aimed at the professionalization of lawyers, the recovery of the nation's judicial rights, and the establishment of the rule of law and judicial independence in the country. Yet, if professionalization per se was an apolitical goal, the demand for the rule of law and judicial independence often challenged the practices of the authorities and thus assumed political meanings. Furthermore, if the demand for the rule of law and judicial independence could be defended as judicial issues and therefore professional concerns for lawyers, the same could not be said of the actions directed at national politics and the government's foreign policies.