A Political Investigation Of Court Ritual In Contemporary China

As far as the rule of law is concerned,the pursuit of justice value embodied by it is not only reflected in the legal text,but also reflected in the process of judicial operation.People need some kind of personal experience to fully perceive and confirm the existence of justice.This is the meaning and value of the existence of legal rituals.Legal ceremonies include various ways of performing the law,and the most important part of it is the court ritual.Court rituals can be seen as the modern incarnation of dispute resolution rituals from anthropological perspective,and at the same time an important part of modern political rituals.It refers to the judicial ritual process in which participants feel the sanctity of justice through complete symbolic linkage and behavior performance under the observation of judicial authority in court space field and in accordance with established rules and procedures.The court ritual has a set of symbol systems,including external landscape,internal space,costume,the text language,behavior order,etc.These symbols form a close linkage system and have complete symbolic meanings.They show the whole ritual process from court sessions,investigations,debates,proofs,presentations,and judgments to the world.At the same time,court rituals have the characteristics of "dramatization" and "theatreization",and they are a performance of judicial authority.It should be said that the majesty,authority,and justice of the law are conveyed to the participants and accepted through the process of the court rituals.This is an important feature of the court ritual which is different from the ordinary legal ceremony.It wins the public's obedience to the judicial authority through one fair decision after another,thus establishing the authority of the law.As a political symbol and a symbol of the rule of law,contemporary Chinese court rituals have experienced a tortuous development process of exploration,stagnation and reshaping.Since the reform and opening up,there have been four rounds of judicial reforms.In the tens of millions of cases accepted each year,judicial staff have followed existing rules and made judicial decisions in a ritualized manner.This shows that court rituals have played an important role in the construction of the rule of law in contemporary China.However,the actual operation of court rituals has problems such as cultural discomfort,absence of daily,and blurring of performances.These problems reflect the inherent defects in the symbolic construction,symbolic significance and social function realization of the court ritual in contemporary China.The complex of judicial popularization,the secret function of traditional legal culture and the collective discomfort of ritual participants are the important reasons for these problems.In the context of judicial reform of "judicial centralism",the state has paid institutional attention to the theoretical research and system design of court rituals.However,the value of court rituals lies in truly understanding the inherent attributes of the law and constructing a set of "justice performance methods" that are born in traditional Chinese culture and conform to the moral and psychological emotions of contemporary Chinese people.If this can be achieved,Chinese court rituals will gradually implement the value requirements of natural justice,due process,and procedural justice,and conform to the Chinese people's innate concept of fairness and justice,so that the legal system and even the ruling order will be recognized and respected by the Chinese people.The main text is divided into six chapters.The introduction part mainly clarifies the original intention of studying contemporary Chinese court rituals,and proposes the importance of court ritual research in establishing judicial authority and promoting the construction of the rule of law.In the literature review part,it sorts out the development context and important academic achievements of the main subjects of the East and the West on rituals,political rituals and court rituals,and analyzes the research pedigree in this field more comprehensively.It also explains the argumentation method,analysis path and argumentation framework of this article.The second chapter mainly combs and clarifies the basic theory of court ritual research,analyzes the concept and characteristics of court ceremony,and analyzes the relationship between court ceremony and drama.Chapter Three analyzes the changing process of contemporary Chinese courts from a historical perspective.Through the establishment of the institutional changes of court functions,the prying into the historical development context of court architecture,layout,and theaterization,it explains the changes in the symbolic function of courts in the history of the rule of law in China.Then,it analyzes the symbol system of court ceremony from the internal symbol construction.The fourth chapter analyzes the interactive relationship between court ceremony and judicial authority from the dynamic operation of court ceremony,and analyzes the important role of judges,procedures,and judgments in the realization of judicial authority.At the same time,it discusses the ritual presentation of peace and rationality under procedural restraint and substantive justice.Chapter 5 restores the perspective from the inside of court rituals to the social and cultural environment,focusing on the realization of the social functions of court rituals and the difficulties in actual operation.On the one hand,the popularity of justice has an impact on it,on the other hand,the defects of the design of the judicial system have also become an obstacle.The traditional legal culture also has a secret impact on the development of the court rituals.The sixth chapter starts from the transition of the symbolic value of court rituals,and proposes the influence of the judicial system on court rituals and the reform path of the development of court rituals.It analyzes from two aspects of institutional reshaping and sacredness shaping,and draws the conclusion that ritual is a necessary way to be sure of justice.The last part of the article is the conclusion,which summarizes full text.The fundamental purpose of this article is to make the court ritual and judicial authority interact and complement each other through the establishment of the "rule of law symbol" of modern court ceremony,in order to make justice happen through the ritual,so as to confirm the ultimate value of court ceremony.