Overview

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.

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9780190060046

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Reviews

Chinese legal history is rapidly gaining prominence in Western academic circles, with more and more people recognizing its immense importance to understanding both Chinese history and contemporary Chinese legal development. Heaven Has Eyes is an important, highly useful, and well-composed overview of Chinese legal history that could provide a unifying theme around which future debates could take place. -- Taisu Zhang, Professor of Law, Yale Law School This is a sweeping study of Chinese law from the inception of the imperial state to the present day that admirably covers important trends and change over time, enriched by well-chosen examples of law in operation. Accessible and yet scholarly, the book provides an even-handed, historical framework for understanding some of the most controversial issues facing China today. Comparative insights move the book beyond China studies to the larger discourse about law and empire. -- Karen Gottschang Turner, Editor, The Limits of the Rule of Law in China; Research Fellow, East Asian Legal Studies, Harvard Law School Based on rich and solid documents, Heaven Has Eyes offers a systematic account of Chinese legal history and the recent transformation of the Chinese legal system. Xiaoqun Xu perceptively grasps the essence of the Chinese legal culture and practices in the traditional period and illustrates a vibrant process in which the ancient concepts of legal justice interacted with newly imported legal ideas and jurisprudence in the twentieth century and continues to do so today. This valuable book benefits everyone who wants to learn about China and its legal culture. -- Xiaoping Cong, Professor of History, University of Houston, author of Marriage, Law and Gender in Revolutionary China, 1940-1960

""Chinese legal history is rapidly gaining prominence in Western academic circles, with more and more people recognizing its immense importance to understanding both Chinese history and contemporary Chinese legal development. Heaven Has Eyes is an important, highly useful, and well-composed overview of Chinese legal history that could provide a unifying theme around which future debates could take place."" -- Taisu Zhang, Professor of Law, Yale Law School ""This is a sweeping study of Chinese law from the inception of the imperial state to the present day that admirably covers important trends and change over time, enriched by well-chosen examples of law in operation. Accessible and yet scholarly, the book provides an even-handed, historical framework for understanding some of the most controversial issues facing China today. Comparative insights move the book beyond China studies to the larger discourse about law and empire."" -- Karen Gottschang Turner, Editor, The Limits of the Rule of Law in China; Research Fellow, East Asian Legal Studies, Harvard Law School ""Based on rich and solid documents, Heaven Has Eyes offers a systematic account of Chinese legal history and the recent transformation of the Chinese legal system. Xiaoqun Xu perceptively grasps the essence of the Chinese legal culture and practices in the traditional period and illustrates a vibrant process in which the ancient concepts of legal justice interacted with newly imported legal ideas and jurisprudence in the twentieth century and continues to do so today. This valuable book benefits everyone who wants to learn about China and its legal culture."" -- Xiaoping Cong, Professor of History, University of Houston, author of Marriage, Law and Gender in Revolutionary China, 1940-1960

Author Information

Xiaoqun Xu is Professor of History at Christopher Newport University.

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