A Study On Judicial System Of Song Dynasty By Seeing From "the Water Margin"

"The Water Margin"is a piece of outstanding and realistic work which describes and extols the peasant's uprising. It reflects the social style and features of Song Dynasty. The judicial system of Song Dynasty which"the Water Margin"relates to is just in agreement with the history reality. It describes how feudal rulers used laws as a violence tool to carry out cruel judicial suppressing on people.The judicial system of Song Dynasty reformed and replenished constantly on the foundation of former dynasty, which made it getting riper day by day and thus reached the summit of the judicial system of feudal society of our country. But it also existed some drawbacks because of the restrictions placed by feudal autocratic-ism. From some"complicated legal case"stories described in"the Water Margin", the situation of judicial system of Song Dynasty in actual operation can be seen as follows: the adjudication system and the legal norm are meticulous, the relevant litigation procedure was carefully stipulated; the central problem in the litigation activity was to determine the commission of a crime and dealt with the case according to it. In order to reach this aim, analyzing the case carefully on the basis of ample evidences and then dealing with it in terms of the laws. Therefore, the collection of evidences was the crucial step in the litigation procedure, the evidence system was the core part in the litigation procedure. In Song Dynasty, the oral evidence and the tangible evidence had got further development and consummation, especially the system of investigation of the scene of a crime was becoming more and more perfect day by day. The prison was used as the national violence machine, the past dynasty rulers made use of it to consolidate their own reign. Compared with the former dynasty, the development of prison system of Song Dynasty appeared to be more perfect and intensive, its characteristic of despotism is even more distinct. Follow the development of the feudal monarch despotism and the sharpening of social class combat, the prison system became darker and more corrupt, thus it reflected the historical trend that the landlord class of feudal society was in the situation of decadent and declining."The Water Margin"has certain realistic value to the reflection of social life at that time, if analyzing from the visual angle of legal institution, it truly reproduces the judicial state of the society at that time. Among it some judicial activities described have reflected the main characteristics of the judicial system of Song Dynasty of our country: Calming people's anger and obeying their favor as the orientation goal in judicial operation, the judicial idea of making the laws for the use of ruling stratum, the judicial personnel were favoritism and crooked the laws, the people's stratum feared the laws and tried to avoid the laws, for them, the personal loyalty was more important than the laws. The judicial power lacked independent. These characteristics were determined by particular centralized politics and ethical spirits of the laws of ancient China. Holding this correctly is good for contemporary China's construction of law ruling.