On Legal Education In Universities Since The Founding Of PRC

Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China and through the hard work and concerted efforts of the people from all nationalities, Great changes have taken place in all aspects of the Chinese society ever since the founding of Republic of China sixty-four years ago. In the historical process of the construction of democracy and legal system in China the concept of "the rule of law" has been gradually established and accepted by the general public and evolved from "the rule of man" to the "the rule of law",and then from the "the rule by law" to "the rule of law" in China. Thus building a socialist country under the rule of law has become the basic principle and policy which has been put into the Constitution of China. After the early days of turbulences, China is on its way to its great rejuvenation, embarking on the great journey into the construction of socialist country with Chinese characteristics under the rule of law.As valuable human resources for the country, young college students are entrusted with the hope and future of the country and the nation. Their awareness of the rule of law and the legal quality are directly related to the future and destiny of the party as well as the country. The successful implementation of legal education to this special group of young people is vital not only to cultivate the qualified socialist builders and reliable successors, but also to promote the prosperity of the cause of the party and the country. It is a great project to implement the scientific concept of development, a popular project to improve the quality of the whole nation, and a strategy to build a socialist country under the rule of law. The university is known as a barometer of changes in political, economic, cultural and social spheres. Thus, the process of the Legal Education in universities in China becomes the epitome of the construction of the legal system in China. At the same time, universities are still important sectors for the study of philosophy and social sciences, shouldering great responsibilities for educating people to supply high-quality talents to the community. Logically speaking, the construction of democracy and legal system in China is an important part of the modernization of socialism with Chinese characteristics, while legal education in universities constitutes an inseparable part of the democratic and legal construction.The present relative study on legal education in universities mainly focuses on the summary without comments and reviews, overlooking a comprehensive understanding of the merits and demerits of the legal education in the past sixty years. Legal education in universities can be divided into two major periods, the first three decades and the latter three decades with the year of1978as the demarcating line, demonstrating a process of five stages of development, resulting in four major historical turning points. Legal education before the reform and opening up has gone through two stages of development, namely the initial exploring stage (1949-1956), and frustrating stage (1957-1977). The previous period witnessed two major shifts: the first from destruction to construction, and the second from redestruction to rebuilding. Legal education after the reform and opening up has gone through three stages of development, recovery stage (1978-1985), development stage (1986-2003) and innovation stage (2004-), showcasing two important historical transformations: from the legal knowledge education to legal awareness education; from the legal awareness education to legal quality enhancement education. Legal education made major breakthroughs both in concept and in practice, experiencing a shift of channels for legal education program, that is, from the curriculum of1985to those of1998and2005. Legal education in universities has been established from scratch, through a transformation from complexity to simplicity, from passive education to active education and from a spontaneous one to a conscious one. Legal education before the reform and opening up abounds in more lessons than experiences, yet the cornerstone of enlightenment can not be ignored. By building a socialist country under the rule of law as the theme and taking the socialist legal consciousness as the core, through the ideological and political theory courses, Legal education after the reform and opening up combines the rule of virtue and the rule of law with a view to continuously promoting the in-depth construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics.From a combination of vertical and horizontal levels and through highlighting the features of each stage in history, the present dissertation makes a systematic and reflective comparison of successes and failures on legal education and presents a panorama of the main aspects of university legal education backgrounds, the basic approaches, stage characteristics and lessons learned. By a comprehensive and systematic review and summary of legal education and through an analysis of vicissitudes, the dissertation sketches out a timeline of legal education which will undoubtedly serve as a guideline for future research, therefore embodying a major theoretical and practical significance.The history of legal education is a continuous process, with every historical stage having its own various characteristics highlighting the distinctive characteristics of the times, which in turn reflects the changing course of the development of democracy and the legal system in China. The course of development of legal education since the founding of China has been in a cline, which is spiraling with the times. Looking back into the past, the glorious history of the university legal education will be condensed into the power source for the precipitation of legal education in the future, and the experiences and the painful lessons we shall draw from history will pave a way for the proliferation, equalization and standardized development of legal education in China in the near future.