John C.H. Wu's Inheriting And Transcending To Holmes' Philosophy Of Law

Since the initiation of legal reformation in late Qing Dynasty, Chinese lawyers have devoted themselves to the quest of legal significance in the people's living. Among them, John C. H. Wu is the most eminent for his gifted cognition of law, profound understanding of the trends of law development and the spirit of law, and his firm belief in positivism and metaphysics throughout his academic quest. He has endeavored to transcend oriental and occidental theories of law.Wu's theory of law is abundant in its content, his philosophy of law in particular. His three-dimension theory of law is widely taken as the origination of Chinese Neo-analytical School of Jurisprudence, providing and enriching the legal argumentation of Holmes'predictive theory of law. He attaches much importance to the research on the scientific methods in judicial process and the psychological factors in law, and introduces psychology into legal research. He takes law as an art of balancing interests and demonstrates his splendid intuition in the use of this art. Following St. Thomas Aquinas, Wu bases natural law on the real world and makes it a live rule that changes to the development of society.This thesis presents a comparative analysis of Wu's and Holmes'philosophies of law for the quest of the special value of Wu's theory of law. Wu's neo-analytical legal theory, though originating in Holmes'theory, develops a new school of theory on the basis of a compound of thoughts of many other legal schools and promotes the development of the realism jurisprudence to a new stage. His intellectual and contemplative intuition, inspired by Holmes'perception of law, integrates the Chinese intuition and Holmes'into a new style of perception of law. His theory of natural law integrates science and religious worship, eternality and transience, and changeability and persistence, which provides inspirations for the current predominance of Positivism and Relativism in legal research.This thesis is composed of five parts. The Introduction part introduces the background of this research and current development of the area, perspectives and the structure of the thesis. Chapter One analyzes Holmes'philosophy of law from Wu's perspective. Chapter Two introduces Wu's philosophy of law, focusing on his neo-analytical theory of law, theory of natural law and epistemology of law. Chapter Three presents a comparative analysis of Wu's and Holmes'philosophies of law to probe into the links between the two and the special features of Wu's theory of law. The conclusion part presents comments on Wu's philosophy of law.