Research On Shen Jiaben And Death Penalty Reformation In Late Qing Dynasty

Since the first Opium War, the Late Qing Dynasty started to transit from traditional agricultural society to modern industry under the impact of western powers. In this drastic social change, the study of death penalty transformation of the Late Qing Dynasty is of great value to inspecting the vicissitude of the society.The death penalty is a kind of penalty that deprives a criminal of his life, and life is the carrier of all benefits and rights of a person, therefore death penalty which deprives a criminal of his life is the severest penalty in the legal system. But in the legal system of ancient China, the criminal law played the leading role and the death penalty played the leading role in the criminal law system, therefore the exploration of death penalty in the vicissitude of the late Qing society will contribute to better understanding of the advancement of the modernization of the legal system of the late Qing society, thus deepens our understanding of the vicissitude of modern society.This article attempts to focus on the amendment to laws (1902-1912) by Shen Jiaben, inspect the background to the death penalty reformation of the late Qing society, explore the origin of the death penalty reformation, the course of it and the debate in it.This paper is divided into six chapters. The first chapter focuses on the death penalty system before the amendment to laws in late Qing Dynasty. The first chapter takes the dynasty vicissitude as an outline, simultaneously unifies the specific time death penalty's substantive law and the procedural law, which criminal acts will be punishable by the death penalty, what death penalty's execution way is, makes the dynamic-static binding inspection.The second chapter mainly elaborates key person in the amendment to laws in late Qing Dynasty -Shen Jiaben and his awareness on the death penalty reformation.This chapter first summarizes Shen Jiaben's biography, and inspects his understanding of the death penalty reformation.Chapter III focuses on the origin of the death penalty reformation in the late Qing Dynasty.Firstly the plight of the Qing dynasty before the amendment to lawsSecondly, the significant destruction which extraterritoriality created to the Qing Dynasty rule order.Thirdly, the appearance of"executing a captured offender on the spot"undermined the traditional trial procedures, resulting in the imbalance of central power and presented the picture of the death penalty injustice overflowing. Fourthly, the direct reason of the death penalty reformation, the start of the amendment to laws in late Qing Dynasty.Chapter IV, mainly outlines the different routes in the death penalty reformation in the late Qing Dynasty and the historical choices made by Shen in the face of the complex and complicated situation, and analyzes the reasons for this decision and the pros and cons. Chapter V, mainly deals with the course of the death penalty reformation, taking the activities of Shen Jiaben as the mainline. This chapter is divided into three phases:1902- August, 1904, start-up phase of the death penalty reformation; 1904-1906, the second phase of the death penalty reformation; September, 1906 -1912, the third phase of the death penalty reformation, when the death penalty reformation was completed.Chapter VI mainly discusses the disputes of the different fractions in the death penalty reformation.First, the death penalty reformation and the bu-yuan dispute.Second, the li-fa dispute in the death penalty reformation.The concluding part attempts to make a simple comment on the death penalty reformation and sums up the characteristics, historical contributions and limitations of the death penalty reformation made by Shen. And concludes: the history of the death penalty reformation in the late Qing Dynasty reflects the modernizing winding course of the traditional legal system, and the death penalty reformation in the late Qing Dynasty adapted to certain factors in the development of human civilization, adapted to the traditional social restructuring, and has provided a historical mirror to China's reform of the legal system in the future.The author tries to make macroscopic and microscopic analysis of this vicissitude process, concluded that the death penalty reformation made the death penalty less severe and it realized the modernization of the death penalty, and concluded the death penalty reformation is the core of the amendment to laws in late Qing Dynasty, the modernization of the death penalty is one of the most important landmarks of the modernization of the criminal law in late Qing Dynasty.