Author: Linxia Liang
Publisher: British Academy
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
This detailed analysis of the Qing law codes and of one hundred nineteenth-century case records from Baodi county challenges the view that the traditional Chinese legal system was inappropriate for civil cases and that mediation was preferred instead.
Delivering Justice in Qing China
Author: Linxia Liang
Publisher: British Academy
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
This detailed analysis of the Qing law codes and of one hundred nineteenth-century case records from Baodi county challenges the view that the traditional Chinese legal system was inappropriate for civil cases and that mediation was preferred instead.
Publisher: British Academy
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
This detailed analysis of the Qing law codes and of one hundred nineteenth-century case records from Baodi county challenges the view that the traditional Chinese legal system was inappropriate for civil cases and that mediation was preferred instead.
Civil Justice in China
Author: Philip C. C. Huang
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804734691
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
To what extent do newly available case records bear out our conventional assumptions about the Qing legal system? Is it true, for example, that Qing courts rarely handled civil lawsuits--those concerned with disputes over land, debt, marriage, and inheritance--as official Qing representations led us to believe? Is it true that decent people did not use the courts? And is it true that magistrates generally relied more on moral predilections than on codified law in dealing with cases? Based in large part on records of 628 civil dispute cases from three counties from the 1760’s to the 1900’s, this book reexamines those widely accepted Qing representations in the light of actual practice. The Qing state would have had us believe that civil disputes were so "minor” or "trivial” that they were left largely to local residents themselves to resolve. However, case records show that such disputes actually made up a major part of the caseloads of local courts. The Qing state held that lawsuits were the result of actions of immoral men, but ethnographic information and case records reveal that when community/kin mediation failed, many common peasants resorted to the courts to assert and protect their legitimate claims. The Qing state would have had us believe that local magistrates, when they did deal with civil disputes, did so as mediators rather than judges. Actual records reveal that magistrates almost never engaged in mediation but generally adjudicated according to stipulations in the Qing code.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804734691
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
To what extent do newly available case records bear out our conventional assumptions about the Qing legal system? Is it true, for example, that Qing courts rarely handled civil lawsuits--those concerned with disputes over land, debt, marriage, and inheritance--as official Qing representations led us to believe? Is it true that decent people did not use the courts? And is it true that magistrates generally relied more on moral predilections than on codified law in dealing with cases? Based in large part on records of 628 civil dispute cases from three counties from the 1760’s to the 1900’s, this book reexamines those widely accepted Qing representations in the light of actual practice. The Qing state would have had us believe that civil disputes were so "minor” or "trivial” that they were left largely to local residents themselves to resolve. However, case records show that such disputes actually made up a major part of the caseloads of local courts. The Qing state held that lawsuits were the result of actions of immoral men, but ethnographic information and case records reveal that when community/kin mediation failed, many common peasants resorted to the courts to assert and protect their legitimate claims. The Qing state would have had us believe that local magistrates, when they did deal with civil disputes, did so as mediators rather than judges. Actual records reveal that magistrates almost never engaged in mediation but generally adjudicated according to stipulations in the Qing code.
Chinese Civil Justice, Past and Present
Author: Philip C. Huang
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742567696
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
The culmination of twenty years of research, this essential book completes distinguished historian Philip C. C. Huang's pathbreaking trilogy on Chinese law and society from late imperial times to the present. Huang shows how, at the level of ideology and theory, traditional Chinese law has been rejected time and again in the past century by China's own lawmakers, first in the late Qing and the republic, then in the revolutionary and Maoist periods of the People's Republic, and finally again in the current reform era. Considering legal theory alone, modern Chinese law can only be Western law, and past Chinese law--traditional or Maoist--can have no role under the leadership's current preoccupations with modernization and marketization. But what has actually happened historically at the level of judicial practice and the daily lives of common people? In exploring this central question, Huang draws on a rich array of court records and field interviews to illustrate the surprising strength of traditional Chinese civil justice. Albeit much altered, its legacy can be traced in informal and semiformal community justice (e.g., societal and cadres mediation), as well as in multiple spheres of court-administered formal civil justice, including property rights, inheritance and old-age maintenance, and debt obligations. He also identifies the influence of Maoist justice, especially its divorce and civil court mediation practices. Finally, despite the reform era's massive importation of Western laws, legal reasoning employed in judicial practice has shown remarkable continuity, with major implications for China's future legal system.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742567696
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
The culmination of twenty years of research, this essential book completes distinguished historian Philip C. C. Huang's pathbreaking trilogy on Chinese law and society from late imperial times to the present. Huang shows how, at the level of ideology and theory, traditional Chinese law has been rejected time and again in the past century by China's own lawmakers, first in the late Qing and the republic, then in the revolutionary and Maoist periods of the People's Republic, and finally again in the current reform era. Considering legal theory alone, modern Chinese law can only be Western law, and past Chinese law--traditional or Maoist--can have no role under the leadership's current preoccupations with modernization and marketization. But what has actually happened historically at the level of judicial practice and the daily lives of common people? In exploring this central question, Huang draws on a rich array of court records and field interviews to illustrate the surprising strength of traditional Chinese civil justice. Albeit much altered, its legacy can be traced in informal and semiformal community justice (e.g., societal and cadres mediation), as well as in multiple spheres of court-administered formal civil justice, including property rights, inheritance and old-age maintenance, and debt obligations. He also identifies the influence of Maoist justice, especially its divorce and civil court mediation practices. Finally, despite the reform era's massive importation of Western laws, legal reasoning employed in judicial practice has shown remarkable continuity, with major implications for China's future legal system.
The Compelling Ideal
Author: Jan Kiely
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300185944
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416
Book Description
In this groundbreaking volume, based on extensive research in Chinese archives and libraries, Jan Kiely explores the pre-Communist origins of the process of systematic thought reform or reformation (ganhua) that evolved into a key component of Mao Zedong’s revolutionary restructuring of Chinese society. Focusing on ganhua as it was employed in China’s prison system, Kiely’s thought-provoking work brings the history of this critical phenomenon to life through the stories of individuals who conceptualized, implemented, and experienced it, and he details how these techniques were subsequently adapted for broader social and political use.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300185944
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416
Book Description
In this groundbreaking volume, based on extensive research in Chinese archives and libraries, Jan Kiely explores the pre-Communist origins of the process of systematic thought reform or reformation (ganhua) that evolved into a key component of Mao Zedong’s revolutionary restructuring of Chinese society. Focusing on ganhua as it was employed in China’s prison system, Kiely’s thought-provoking work brings the history of this critical phenomenon to life through the stories of individuals who conceptualized, implemented, and experienced it, and he details how these techniques were subsequently adapted for broader social and political use.
Dispute Resolution in the People’s Republic of China
Author: Zhiqiong June Wang
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900433128X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 339
Book Description
Dispute resolution reforms in China in the last decade or so have all centred around the strategy of establishing an integrated dispute resolution system as part of China’s modern governance system. This new integrated system, referred to as the ‘Mechanism for Pluralist Dispute Resolution (PDR)’ in China, serves as a dispute resolution system as well as a comprehensive social control mechanism. This book is the first academic attempt to explain the methods of civil and commercial dispute resolution in China from the perspective of PDR. It systematically and critically examines the development of China’s dispute resolution system, with each chapter analysing in detail the development and transformation of the different institutions, mechanisms and processes in their historical, politico-economic and comparative context.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900433128X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 339
Book Description
Dispute resolution reforms in China in the last decade or so have all centred around the strategy of establishing an integrated dispute resolution system as part of China’s modern governance system. This new integrated system, referred to as the ‘Mechanism for Pluralist Dispute Resolution (PDR)’ in China, serves as a dispute resolution system as well as a comprehensive social control mechanism. This book is the first academic attempt to explain the methods of civil and commercial dispute resolution in China from the perspective of PDR. It systematically and critically examines the development of China’s dispute resolution system, with each chapter analysing in detail the development and transformation of the different institutions, mechanisms and processes in their historical, politico-economic and comparative context.
Exile in Mid-Qing China
Author: Joanna Waley-Cohen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300048278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267
Book Description
Banishment to Zinjiang ranked second in severity only to death in Qing law. Initiated immediately upon the addition of that Central Asian frontier to the Chinese empire, it became a vital element of both the legal system and the project of colonizing the new frontier. In this book Joanna Waley-Cohen traces the establishment and inital years of the system, showing how the Qing government worked in the decades before dynastic decline took firm hold, exploring the role of banishment in Chinese mainstream and frontier society, and evaluating the system in the context of state expansion, political conflict, and the criminal justice system.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300048278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267
Book Description
Banishment to Zinjiang ranked second in severity only to death in Qing law. Initiated immediately upon the addition of that Central Asian frontier to the Chinese empire, it became a vital element of both the legal system and the project of colonizing the new frontier. In this book Joanna Waley-Cohen traces the establishment and inital years of the system, showing how the Qing government worked in the decades before dynastic decline took firm hold, exploring the role of banishment in Chinese mainstream and frontier society, and evaluating the system in the context of state expansion, political conflict, and the criminal justice system.
The Search for Modern China
Author: Jonathan D. Spence
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393307801
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1054
Book Description
This work chronicles the history of China for over four hundred years through the spring of 1989.
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393307801
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1054
Book Description
This work chronicles the history of China for over four hundred years through the spring of 1989.
True crimes in eighteenth-century China
Author:
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 9780295989068
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The little-examined genre of legal case narratives is represented in this fascinating volume, the first collection translated into English of criminal cases - most involving homicide - from late imperial China. These true stories of crimes of passion, family conflict, neighborhood feuds, gang violence, and sedition are a treasure trove of information about social relations and legal procedure. Each narrative describes circumstances leading up to a crime and its discovery, the appearance of the crime scene and the body, the apparent cause of death, speculation about motives and premeditation, and whether self-defense was involved. Detailed testimony is included from the accused and from witnesses, family members, and neighbors, as well as summaries and opinions from local magistrates, their coroners, and other officials higher up the chain of judicial review. Officials explain which law in the Qing dynasty legal code was violated, which corresponding punishment was appropriate, and whether the sentence was eligible for reduction. These records began as reports from magistrates on homicide cases within their jurisdiction that were required by law to be tried first at the county level, then reviewed by judicial officials at the prefectural, provincial, and national levels, with each administrator adding his own observations to the file. Each case was decided finally in Beijing, in the name of the emperor if not by the monarch himself, before sentences could be carried out and the records permanently filed. All of the cases translated here are from the Qing imperial copies, most of which are now housed in the First Historical Archives, Beijing.
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 9780295989068
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The little-examined genre of legal case narratives is represented in this fascinating volume, the first collection translated into English of criminal cases - most involving homicide - from late imperial China. These true stories of crimes of passion, family conflict, neighborhood feuds, gang violence, and sedition are a treasure trove of information about social relations and legal procedure. Each narrative describes circumstances leading up to a crime and its discovery, the appearance of the crime scene and the body, the apparent cause of death, speculation about motives and premeditation, and whether self-defense was involved. Detailed testimony is included from the accused and from witnesses, family members, and neighbors, as well as summaries and opinions from local magistrates, their coroners, and other officials higher up the chain of judicial review. Officials explain which law in the Qing dynasty legal code was violated, which corresponding punishment was appropriate, and whether the sentence was eligible for reduction. These records began as reports from magistrates on homicide cases within their jurisdiction that were required by law to be tried first at the county level, then reviewed by judicial officials at the prefectural, provincial, and national levels, with each administrator adding his own observations to the file. Each case was decided finally in Beijing, in the name of the emperor if not by the monarch himself, before sentences could be carried out and the records permanently filed. All of the cases translated here are from the Qing imperial copies, most of which are now housed in the First Historical Archives, Beijing.
Forgery and Impersonation in Imperial China
Author: Mark McNicholas
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295806230
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280
Book Description
Across eighteenth-century China a wide range of common people forged government documents or pretended to be officials or other agents of the state. This examination of case records and law codes traces the legal meanings and social and political contexts of small-time swindles that were punished as grave political transgressions.
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295806230
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280
Book Description
Across eighteenth-century China a wide range of common people forged government documents or pretended to be officials or other agents of the state. This examination of case records and law codes traces the legal meanings and social and political contexts of small-time swindles that were punished as grave political transgressions.
Protest with Chinese Characteristics
Author: Ho-fung Hung
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231152035
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
The origin of political modernity has long been tied to the Western history of protest and revolution, the currents of which many believe sparked popular dissent worldwide. Reviewing nearly one thousand instances of protest in China from the eighteenth to the early-nineteenth centuries, Ho-fung Hung charts an evolution of Chinese dissent that stands apart from Western trends. Hung samples from mid-Qing petitions and humble plaints to the emperor. He revisits rallies, riots, market strikes, and other forms of contention rarely considered in previous studies. Drawing on new world history, which accommodates parallels and divergences between political-economic and cultural developments East and West, Hung shows how the centralization of political power and an expanding market, coupled with a persistent Confucianist orthodoxy, shaped protesters' strategies and appeals in Qing China. This unique form of mid-Qing protest combined a quest for justice and autonomy with a filial-loyal respect for the imperial center, and Hung's careful research ties this distinct characteristic to popular protest in China today. As Hung makes clear, the nature of these protests prove late imperial China was anything but a stagnant and tranquil empire before the West cracked it open. In fact, the origins of modern popular politics in China predate the 1911 Revolution. Hung's work ultimately establishes a framework others can use to compare popular protest among different cultural fabrics. His book fundamentally recasts the evolution of such acts worldwide.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231152035
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
The origin of political modernity has long been tied to the Western history of protest and revolution, the currents of which many believe sparked popular dissent worldwide. Reviewing nearly one thousand instances of protest in China from the eighteenth to the early-nineteenth centuries, Ho-fung Hung charts an evolution of Chinese dissent that stands apart from Western trends. Hung samples from mid-Qing petitions and humble plaints to the emperor. He revisits rallies, riots, market strikes, and other forms of contention rarely considered in previous studies. Drawing on new world history, which accommodates parallels and divergences between political-economic and cultural developments East and West, Hung shows how the centralization of political power and an expanding market, coupled with a persistent Confucianist orthodoxy, shaped protesters' strategies and appeals in Qing China. This unique form of mid-Qing protest combined a quest for justice and autonomy with a filial-loyal respect for the imperial center, and Hung's careful research ties this distinct characteristic to popular protest in China today. As Hung makes clear, the nature of these protests prove late imperial China was anything but a stagnant and tranquil empire before the West cracked it open. In fact, the origins of modern popular politics in China predate the 1911 Revolution. Hung's work ultimately establishes a framework others can use to compare popular protest among different cultural fabrics. His book fundamentally recasts the evolution of such acts worldwide.