CHINESE LAW AND ORIENTAL CULTURE
ZhOU Mi and Zong Jianwen
【摘要】Contents
1.The Significance of academic thought in the formation and development of law.
2.People''s Court independently exercises judicial authority according to law.
3.Dialectics in judicial operations
4.The relationship between Legal institution and litigation
5.Legal effect of terms of a contract
【全文】
In making a comprehensive survey of the history of civilization and mankind，one races the historical development of culture.The cultures of all nations have charactecstics in common，althouqh each country''s particular traditions and customs define its personality.
Different cultural backarounds define different features of the leqal structure in societies,Which is probably a general rule followed by all human civiliza tions.Recognition of this rule will contribute much to the promotion of mutual understanding among people With different cultural backqrounds all over the world.
Chinese legal systems have a long history of more than 4000 years.However,because of the closed-door policy in ancient China,coutries outside China knew very little about Chinese leqal systems based on oriental culture until the early 20th century.Particularly in recent years，China''s open-door and reform policies have encouraged more exchanges of legal culture between the East and the West.The people from western cultural backgrounds now have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the Chinese leqal experierice When at the same time Chinese people are given more opportunities to learn from the leqal experierice of othel courtries.In this paper，a brief introduction to Chinese leqal systems and itS Systems and its underlying values in the Oriental World will be given.
Hsing(Which means criminal law)appeared early in 2300 B.C.in China, whiCh was explicitly recorded in the Book of Shang(in the part of the book which describes the prehistoric legendary figure - Shun)as Xiang Yi Dian Xing(which means executing punishment according to the criminal law).Successive dynasties followed this,and promulgated requlations that unified various kinds of leqal branches(that iS what we called Zhu Fa He Ti in Chinese),among which criminal law was the main law controlling the whole country and its people.This was probably the most important feature of Chinese leqal systems in ancient times.China''s expanded open-door po and the promotion of exchanqes between leqal systems of the outside world up to the early time of thiS century resulted in the separation of Chinese criminal law from ancient Chinese leqal systems characterized by Zhu Fa He Ti.From that time on,Chinese criminal laW existed as an indedendent leqal branch.
