Oxford University Press is
publishing a new book offering a general overview of Chinese legal history.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Heaven Has Eyes is a
comprehensive but concise history of Chinese law and justice from the imperial
era to the post-Mao era. Never before has a single book treated the traditional
Chinese law and judicial practices and their modern counterparts as a coherent
history, addressing both criminal and civil justice. This book fills this void.
Xiaoqun Xu addresses the evolution
and function of law codes and judicial practices throughout China's long
history, and examines the transition from traditional laws and practices to
modern ones in the twentieth century. To the Chinese of the imperial era,
justice was an alignment of heavenly reason (tianli), state law (guofa), and
human relations (renqing). 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. The legal-judicial reform
agendas that emerged in the beginning of the twentieth century (and are still
ongoing today) stemmed from this change in Chinese moral and legal thinking,
but to materialize the said principles in everyday practices is a very
different order of things, and the past century was fraught with legal dramas
and tragedies. Heaven Has Eyes lays out how and why that is the case.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Xiaoqun Xu is
Professor of History at Christopher Newport University.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Law and Justice in
Chinese History
Part One: Law and Justice in
Imperial China, 221 BEC-1911 CE
Chapter 1: Five Punishments and
Beyond: The Evolution of Penal Codes in Imperial China
Chapter 2: From the Imperial
Capital to the Magistrate's Court: Judicial Practices in Imperial China
Chapter 3: The Emperor, the
Family, and the Land: Law and Order in Imperial China
Part Two: Law and Justice in Late
Qing and Republican China, 1901-1949
Chapter 4: The Best of the
Chinese and of the Western: Legal-Judicial Reform in the Late Qing, 1901-1911
Chapter 5: The Rule of Law,
Judicial Independence, and Due Process: Ideals and Realities in the Republican
Era, 1912-1949
Chapter 6: Bandits,
Collaborators, and Wives/Concubines: Criminal and Civil Justice in the
Republican Era, 1912-1949
Part Three: Law and Justice in
Maoist China, 1949-1976
Chapter 7: "Contradictions
between the People and the Enemy": Criminal Justice as the
"Proletarian Dictatorship"
Chapter 8: "Contradictions
among the People": Mediation and Adjudication of Civil Disputes
Part Four: Law and Justice in
Post-Mao China, 1977-2018
Chapter 9: The Legal System and
the Rule of Law: Changes in Criminal Justice, 1977-1996
Chapter 10: "Naked
Officials" and "Heavenly Net": Changes in Criminal Justice,
1997-2018
Chapter 11: "Look toward
Money": Civil Justice in Post-Mao China, 1977-2018
Conclusion: Heaven Has Eyes
Chronology of Chinese History
Chinese Character List
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
More info here
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