Criminal Justice System In The Qing Dynasty From The Adulteress Case

The case of Yangnaiwu&Xiaobaicai in Qing Dynasty caused great inflence at that time.Though the case was simple,it had gone through multiple levels of trial,and had been retrialed for many times. A famous newpaper which called"shen newspeper" reported the whole course,and thus got rise to an enormous commotion among the people.In those four years,the Yang family kept complaining to the higher authorities.In the end, the strength of public opinion brought out the high-level officials to associate to make remonstrance to the emperor,and finally got the attention of the imperial court.Hence,the case was retrialed by the Ministry of Punishments and judgement was eventually redressed.It is considered that the corruption and inadequacy of the legal system of the Qing government led to the unjust case.However,if we make a comprehensive survey into the case,apart from the above causes,it also reflects some positive aspects of the legal provisions then.This paper starts with the characteristics of the criminal lawsuits in Qing Dynasty.It analyzes its legal and social backgrounds, meanwhile,it makes a comparison to the present legal system and analyzes the shortcomings of Its legal stipulations as well as the highlights that can be used for referance.This paper consists of three parts,the first part gives a simple introduce of the detail of the case of Yangnaiwu and Xiaobaicai,and analyzes the disadvantages of the legal system the case revealed at that time.It prensents that the factors which caused the unjust case are as follows:the inquisition by torture,the backwardness in inpection technique and method,the inadequacy of supervision of the high level,and the interference to the justice from outside;In the second part,it analyzes the reason for which the case could eventually redressed from the standpoint of the social and legal backgrounds,addressing that the inner cause is the legal system as the Investigating System about Misjudged Cases in Qing dynasty,and the external cause is the independent social supervision by public opinion. The above reasons inseperately contributed to the truth of the case being revealed in the end.The third part of this paper extracts the positive aspects that can be used for reference.At the last place,taking this case as contexural reference,the author puts forwards the ideas of establishing the system of the right of silence,perfecting the criminal trial monitor program and the people juror system,with the hope that it can help the amendment of the code of criminal procedure.