On The Official Settlement Procedures Of Civil Dispute In Song Dynasty

With the development of Productivity, the socio-economic structures of Song have undergone major changes, civil relations have been increasingly complex and the number of civil disputes has been increasingly large. In this case, the ruler and officials at all levels of Song changed their concepts, in a positive and pragmatic attitude to deal with the changing. The steps and procedures to settlement the civil disputes in law and in the practical activities, together constitute systematic official dispute settlement procedures. Solution to the Song Dynasty official settlement procedure of civil disputes, scholars mostly in the name of "The civil system of Song ", and directly applied to today's civil law in the terms study. In this Paper, the writer abandon such practices, use "The official civil dispute settlement procedures of Song" as the title, and carrying out inquiry basic on the historical records.The official civil dispute settlement procedure of Song is divided into Starting, Progressing, and the Ending three stages. Starting is made by the accusing of parties in the civil disputes and official accepting. When the eligible subjects in civil disputes specified by the County Yamen within the time, and after Guanfu opened the letters they received, the official civil dispute settlement procedure should start. Progress of the proceeding is dominated by the magistrate. Firstly, magistrates will assign related workers to verify the fact; then, the magistrates will listening and identify the truth of the dispute by themselves. When the truth of the dispute has been found out, the proceeding of the settlement of dispute come to the ending. At the end of the stage, magistrates will base on the listening to the defendants and accord to the specific circumstances of the disputes to select the methods of mediation or written judgment to close the case. Usually, if the parties of the civil disputes conviction the result of the case, the magistrates must close the cases and the settlements of civil disputes are completed. But, the official civil dispute settlement procedures of Song are not finished, when the results are proofed to be wrong, the procedure of relief will be started. As long as Guanfu give a wrong result of the dispute, the both sides in the dispute can appeal according to the order of County -the state-(government, military, and prison)-Lu-Central-the Emperor.In this Paper, we will see that the concept, purpose, program composition, system structure and the terms of the official civil dispute settlement procedure of Song is fit to their age. And the official civil dispute settlement procedure of Song is quite different from today's civil litigation system; we can not directly call it as "civil litigation system". In addition, it is not contradictory to the traditional thought on "no litigation" or the thought on "litigiosity" of Song Dynasty. The thought on "non-litigation" is the ideal of government, but the "litigiosity" is a social reality at that time, the official civil dispute settlement procedure of Song just is a passage from the litigiosity reality to the thought on non-litigation. Three of them achieve unified to keep lasting political stability of Song Dynasty. In short, the generation and development of official civil disputes settlement procedure of Song Dynasty is the result of social changes at that time, and it is adapt to the realistic need at that time. To this procedure, its idea of main, processes carried out, and contents of judgments embody the characteristics of rule-based, programmable and rational. It is an institutional disputes settlement which different from today's civil litigation system.