Law Students And Modern Shanghai (late Qing Dynasty-1937)

This paper takes the returned students who studied in Law and lived in modern Shanghai as the study object. It tries to show different aspects of social life's changes in modern Shanghai, and then to explain how law students affected these changes. In modern China, Shanghai city has the highest level of modernization. Frequent business activities here made the legal system and educational environment more mature, so many returned law students gathered in Shanghai, and promoted the changes in social life actively. Studying the relationship between returned law students and modern Shanghai in-depth is helpful for understanding the evolution of group relation and spiritual life during the process of social life's changes. It also provided reference for the thoughts on inheriting traditional culture and absorbing exotic culture, and make sense for understanding the social transition in modern Shanghai, and even in modern China.During the feudal times of China, control mechanism was attached more importance to public power, less to private rights; more to rule of man, less to rule of law. At that time, Shanghai also lacked off constitutional government, republic, rule of law, individual rights, judicial independence, lawyer system and so on. Until late Qing Dynasty, when returned law students gathered in Shanghai, they spread western legal knowledge to the public through various ways. Such as translating foreign law books into Chinese, founding newspapers and magazines of law, introducing lawyer system and so on. This spreading process of modern law knowledge and legal concept is also an essential part of the social life's changes in Modern Shanghai.In ancient China, legal education was different from modern times. Chinese traditional legal education was carried out by nongovernmental organization. In the early days of Shanghai opening port, people still continued to use traditional legal education mode. It means legal education was supplementary besides "The Four Books and The Five Classics". In the early time of the Republic of China, the Ministry of Education called abroad students from Japan and western countries together to study out new academic structure. Afterwards, law Students in Shanghai began to found new legal education system and served as the backbones in it. In the meantime, Shanghai became the center of modern legal education. From 1920 to 1939, Shanghai had founded 6 Law colleges and 6 universities with Law School. Gradually, returned law students developed an independent research system in their teaching, and brought up a new intellectual group with modern social consciousness. Then they became the endogenous motivation for Chinese Law's Modern Transformation.After the Revolution of 1911, with the efforts of law students, lawyer system was established and run smoothly in Shanghai. Lawyers groups were also formed here. Lawyers groups influenced the legal concept of Chinese society deeply in Shanghai through trials of various cases, non-litigation legal services and legal aids. From the aspect of social construction, lawyers groups and other new emerging professional groups constituted a new stratum together, which broke the traditional social structure-scholar, farmer, artisan and merchant. Law students in the lawyers groups were admired by the public due to their social status and considerable income.Law students in the lawyers groups established Shanghai Bar Association earlier in China. Benefiting from Shanghai's social and economic environment, Shanghai Bar Association became the largest and most influential one at that time in China. Law students, who were the main leadership of Shanghai Bar Association, tried the management model of industry self-management, and explored social functions of the social groups actively to coordinate the relationship between state and society. In modern Shanghai, this interaction managing model between social groups and state government reflected the changes of society operation in Shanghai city.In sum, in the education field, law students founded and developed new legal education, and brought up new emerging professional groups; in the lawyers circles, law students established a good social image of lawyers, spread the concept of the modern lawsuit, and tried interactive collaboration between social groups and state via lawyers group; in the field of law research, law students formed an independent legal research system gradually, proposed the researching method of revitalization of the Chinese legal system, and expressed the willingness to increase legal and cultural exchanges with foreign countries. These series activities can reflect the social life's changes in urban Shanghai from various aspects.