Overview

Legal history studies have often focused mainly on codified law, without attention to actual practice, and on the past, without relating it to the present. As the title—Research from Archival Case Records: Law, Society, and Culture in China—of this book suggests, the authors deliberately follow the research method of starting from court actions and only on that basis engage in discussions of laws and legal concepts and theory. The articles cover a range of topics and source materials, both past and present. They provide some surprising findings—about disjunctures between code and practice, adjustments between them, and how those reveal operative principles and logics different from what the legal texts alone might suggest. Contributors are: Kathryn Bernhardt, Danny Hsu, Philip C. C. Huang, Christopher Isett, Yasuhiko Karasawa, Margaret Kuo, Huaiyin Li, Jennifer M. Neighbors, Bradly W. Reed, Matthew H. Sommer, Huey Bin Teng, Lisa Tran, Elizabeth VanderVen, and Chenjun You.

Full Product Details

Author:   Philip C.C. Huang ,  Kathryn Bernhardt
Publisher:   Brill
Imprint:   Brill
Volume:   1
Dimensions:   Width: 15.50cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   1.028kg
ISBN:  

9789004271883

ISBN 10:   9004271880
Pages:   568
Publication Date:   13 March 2014
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available To Order  
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Table of Contents

Introduction      Philip C. C. Huang Part One Analytical Approaches: History of Practice•Women's History•Local Administration•Discourse Analysis•Case Records as Ethnographic Evidence 1. The History-of-Practice Approach to Studying Chinese Law (Introduction to Chinese Civil Justice, Past and Present)      Philip C. C. Huang Practice as Opposed to Theory: Legal Formalism and the History of Practice of American Law Practice as Opposed to Representation: Qing Law Practice as Opposed to Institutions: Male and Female Inheritance Rights and Their Actual Operation The History of Practice vs. Formalist Theory Practical Moralism Divorce Law Practices and the System of Court Mediation The Third Realm and Centralized Minimalism Community Mediation under Minimalist Governance 2. Women and Property in China, 960-1949, Introduction and Conclusion      Kathryn Bernhardt Introduction Conclusion 3. Illicit Bureaucrats      Bradly W. Reed Preface The Issues Past Scholarship 4. From Oral Testimony to Written Records in Qing Legal Cases      Yasuhiko Karasawa Introduction The Status of Depositions in Qing Legal Procedure Writing Legal Testimony in the Context of Literary Culture Records of Oral Testimony Written in the Vernacular Composing Testimony at the Local Level: A “Directly Examined” Case from Beijing Conclusion 5. Abortion in Late Imperial China: Routine Birth Control or Crisis Intervention?      Matthew H. Sommer Introduction Past Scholarship Abortion in Qing Legal Records Unsafe Abortion in Modern China Conclusion Part Two Buying and Selling of Land•Homicides 6. Customary and Judicial Practices and the Criminal Sale of Land in Qing Manchuria      Christopher Isett Sources and Methods The Criminalization of Customary Practice in Manchuria The Sale of Qing Land to Commoners Rural Agents, Peasant Defiance, and the Politics of Local Compromise Adjudication in the Face of Criminal Customary Acts 7. Guoshi Killing: The Continuum of Criminal Intent in Qing and Republican China      Jennifer M. Neighbors Guoshi Killing in the Qing Dynasty The Republican Codes Conclusion Part Three Tax•Education•Local Governance 8. Between the State and the Village: Land taxation and “Substantive Governance” in Traditional China      Huaiyin Li Introduction The County Government and the Xiangdi Village Regulations on Taxation in the Late Qing Village Regulations on Taxation in the Republican Period The Collection of Enclave Taxes Conclusion 9. Village-State Cooperation: Modern Community Schools and Their Funding, Haicheng County, Fengtian, 1905-1931      Elizabeth VanderVen The Setting: Fengtian Province and Haicheng County Funding the New Community Primary Schools Multi-Village Relationships: Creativity, Cooperation, and Conflict 10. Power Networks and State-Society Relations in Republican China      Danny Hsu Local Governance in Late Imperial China Xinmin County in Early Republican China Power Networks in Xinmin County Sub-County Administration in the Early Republic Sichuan and the National Government Conclusion Part Four Concubinage•Spousal Abuse •Transnational Families 11. Ceremony and the Definition of Marriage under Republican Law      Lisa Tran Ceremony in Social Practice Ceremony in Early Republican Law The Legal Space for Concubinage in the Early Republic Ceremony in the 1929-30 Civil Code From Consent to Complicity under GMD Law 12. Spousal Abuse: Divorce Litigation and the Emergence of Rights Consciousness in Republican China      Margaret Kuo The Prevalence of Intolerable Cruelty Divorce Litigation From Grievance to Injustice: “Naming, Blaming, and Claiming” “Please protect women’s rights”: Cao Xiuzhen’s Pleas Intolerable Cruelty Defenses: Marriage Finance, Economic Hardship, and Socioeconomic Interpretations of Rights State Approaches to Intolerable Cruelty Cases: Judicial Outcomes Affirm a Modern Conjugal Patriarchy Individual Rights and the Ironic Affirmation of Modern Conjugal Patriarchy 13. Law, Gongqin and Transnational Polygamy: Family Matters in Fujian and British Malaya, 1855-1942      Huey Bin Teng Between Two Worlds: The Making of Chinese Customary Law in Malaya Exceptions to the Common Law: The Making of Chinese Customary Law Mediation and Enforcement: The Gongqin in Cross-Border Conflicts Part Five Past and Present: Local Administration• Court Mediation 14. Centralized Minimalism: Semiformal Governance by Quasi-Officials and Dispute Resolution in China      Philip C. C. Huang The Evidence Centralized Minimalism Confucianized Legalism Bureaucratization and Minimalism in Contemporary China 15. Court Mediation in China, Past and Present      Philip C. C. Huang The Ideology of Mediation in the Qing The Actual Practice of Qing Courts Mediation in the Republic The Ideology of Mediation in Post-1949 China The Practice of Court Mediation in Post-1949 China Between Mediation and Adjudication The Nature of Contemporary Chinese Judicial Mediation The Qing, the Republic, and Post-1949 China The Logic of Chinese Court Mediation Postscript 16. How a ""New Legal History"" Might Be Possible: Recent Trends in Chinese Legal History Studies in the United States and Its Implications      Chenjun You Introduction: An Intellectual Earthquake? Westerners’ Misunderstandings of and Reflections on Traditional Chinese Law Judicial Archives and Research on Chinese Legal History Chinese Legal History Studies and the Social Sciences Discovering a Historical Sense in the Meeting of Empiricism and Theory Stones from Other Hills May Serve to Polish the Jade of This One 他山之石，可以攻玉: The UCLA Research Group’s Achievements and Chinese Introspection Conclusion

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Author Information

Philip C. C. Huang taught at UCLA from 1966 to 2004, advancing to “Professor, Above-Scale” in 1991, and has taught at the Renmin University of China, in the Law School and the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, since 2005. He was the founding director of UCLA’s Center for Chinese Studies from 1986 of 1995, the (founding) editor of Modern China: An International Journal of History and Social Science from 1975 to the present, and the (founding) editor of 中国乡村研究 (Rural China: An International Journal of History and Social Science) from 2003 to the present. His major publications are his trilogy on rural China: The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China, 1985 (awarded the Fairbank prize of the American Historical Association); The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988, 1990 (awarded the Levenson prize of the Association for Asian Studies); and 超越左右：从实践历史探寻探寻中国农村发展出路 (Beyond the Left-Right Divide: Searching for a Path of Rural Development in China from the History of Practice), in Chinese only, 2014. And his trilogy on Chinese civil justice: Civil Justice in China: Representation and Practice in the Qing, 1996; Code, Custom, and Legal Practice in China: The Qing and the Republic Compared, 2001; Chinese Civil Justice, Past and Present, 2010. All the books in English have been published in multiple printings and editions in Chinese. Kathryn Bernhardt is professor emerita of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Rents, Taxes, and Peasant Resistance: The Lower Yangzi Region, 1840-1950 (Stanford University Press, 1992; awarded the 1992 John K. Fairbank prize of the American Historical Association) and Women and Property in China, 960-1949 (Stanford University Press, 1999) and co-editor (with Philip C. C. Huang) of Civil Law in Qing and Republican China (Stanford University Press, 1994).

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