The Research Of Gentry And Litigation In Ming Dynasty

The gentry,who is important privileged stratum in the Ming and Qing Dynasties time,and from the local to the central authorities,from the family to the country at all levels of society playing an influential role,has always been paid attention by Chinese and foreign scholars.Relatively speaking,method of the legal history is more deficient at present. Therefore,this article attempts from the legal history angle to carefully examine Ming Dynasty's gentry social stratum,and take this as the starting point,investigated to the grass roots society's legal life at that time.This article takes the court documents as main research material.Through reading the nine kinds of Ming Dynasty cases,the author excavated 608 related documents,and have carried on a more systematic reorganization and the classification.Based on this,the author analyzed on the type of the litigations related,the content of the dispute,and the processing result and so on;on the one hand the author investigated the strategy which the gentry and others who participated in the litigations have been taken,and the attitude of judges to the gentry.The total paper can be divided into three parts.The first chapter is the first part.The author defined the gentry from the Ming Dynasty official text,and put forward own views on the concept of a gentry.Meanwhile the authors hackled the institutional stipulated which scattering on the legal texts related,and discussed the legal privileges of the gentry systematically.Chapterâ…¡and Chapterâ…¢combined the second part.The author investigated various types litigation which the gentry involved in.The chapterâ…¡focuses on the civil action.In the ordinary civil action,the author focused on the civil habits which the law has not been fully reflected in,the reasons for the occurrence of disputes,and gentry's behavior in civil relationship.In addition,the author also analyzed with the gentry related special type civil action.Chapterâ…¢focuses on the criminal action.In this chapter,the author focus on the characteristics of all kinds of crime reflects and the particularity of gentry in criminal action.Through each kind of litigation's research,the author pointed out that the gentry massively abuses the privileges,and has violated other people's benefit.The ordinary populace also seek the advantage for oneself by using gentry's power or in the name of gentry fraudulently. Judge often will look after to the gentry in dealing with litigations.Chapterâ…£is Part three.It concerns to how the parties dispute in the litigation.From the litigation process,the author analyzed the strategy which the litigant taken for win or seek to avoid responsibility.At the same time,the author investigated that how the judge treat the gentry in every litigation stages.By researching,We can find that not only in lodging a complaint,processing question,but also doing a final judgement,judge has tendentiousness to the gentleman.Although it will not far away form the rule,if all sorts of preferential benefits are accumulated,it will influence the entire litigation final outcome greatly..In the conclusion,the author has carried on the brief summary to this article viewpoint,and through the data analysis pointed out that the probability of the Ming Dynasty gentry which appears in the litigation must surpass that of the ordinary person more.This situation has great relationship with the special treatment which gentry enjoyed on their legal system and its actual operation.At the same time,the author also believed that populace in the traditional society are as not fear justice as they look like.They will also realize their goal by using the litigation, even has many the skills in dealt with the litigation.