Book Description

"A history of Chinese law and justice from the imperial era to the post-Mao era, the book addresses the evolution and function of law codes and judicial practices in China's long history, and examines the transition from traditional laws and practices to their modern counterparts in the twentieth century and beyond. From the ancient times to the twenty-first century, there has been an enduring expectation or hope among the Chinese people that justice should and will be done in society, which is expressed in a popular Chinese saying, "Heaven has eyes." To the Chinese mind in the imperial era, justice was, and was to be achieved as, an alignment of Heavenly reason, state law, and human relations. Such a conception did not change until the turn of the twentieth century when Western-derived notions--natural rights, legal equality, the rule of law, judicial independence, and due process--came to replace the Confucian moral code of right and wrong, which was a fundamental shift in philosophical and moral principles that informed law and justice. The legal-judicial reform agendas since the beginning of the twentieth century (still ongoing today) stemmed from this change in the Chinese moral and legal thinking, but to materialize the said principles in everyday practices is a very different order of things that is much more difficult to accomplish, hence all the legal dramas including tragedies in the past one century or so. The book will lay out how and why that is the case"--