Civil Legal System And Social Changes Of South Song Dynasty

It is of important value for scholars to study the legal history and use the research production for reference. What does history provide for reference when China is changing to "rule of law" state at today's reforming period? In order to find the answer, this paper concentrates on civil legal system and social changes of South Song Dynasty.The traditional study on Chinese legal history pays more attention to legal rules, lacks research on society where the legal rules exist and interaction between the legal rules and the society, so it always can't go beyond the scope of history of political system. In this paper, in the eyes of sociology of law, the author tries to make a more intensive study on the relationships between law and social changes, and ultimately to use these researching fruits for reference in the China's progress to "rule of law" state. The study objects are specially extended to how law is adapted to the social changes, what factors affect the exertion of law, etc. The methods the author used include: historic research, comparative research and so on.The study on the relationship between law and social change should be focused on civil legal system because it has the closest relations with civil life. And the study on history of China civil legal system should pay more attention to civil legal system of South Song Dynasty for the following reasons: firstly, South Song was an important period in the history of China civil legal system; secondly, "Ming Gong Shu Pan Qing Ming Ji", which is thought to be the first works about judicial cases in ancient China, provides us precious, first-hand materials, which ensures research's reliability; finally, Western society also experienced important change at the same time to South Song, and many scholars deem that Western modern legal tradition originated in the 11th to 13th Century. Therefore, it is of important theoretical value and practical value to study on civil legal system and social change of South Song Dynasty.The study in this paper proceeds with four progressive steps. In the first part, the author reviews civil legal system of South Song Dynasty on the basis of "Ming Gong Shu Pan Qing Ming Ji". The author comes to the conclusion that civil legal system of South Song is more developed than before. In the Second part, the author studies the reasons why civil legal system of South Song so developed from perspective of society of South Song. The reason lies in three aspects, there are social economy , social structure and social spirit. In the third part, by comparing with contemporaneous western society, the author analysis the impact of the civil legal system of South Song Dynasty. Lastly, the author arrive the conclusions of this paper, and attain the precious lessons and illuminations that the history of South Song provides us, they are as the following.The conclusions are the development of the civil law system of South Song Dynasty is the results of its social changes, at the same time, the development of the civil law system of South Song Dynasty affect it social changes. The illuminations are: First, legal sense may play an important active role in the early days of social transformation, and we should take steps cause legal sense to change. Second, law and society play interactive role to each other, and social transformation needs actions of social economic conditions, social structure conditions and social spirits. Third, it is an important way to mold new legal culture tradition to cause social economic conditions, social structure conditions and social spirits jointly play their roles. Last, today, we should mold new legal culture tradition of "rule of law" to construct our state of "rule of law".