Qing Dynasty Law Announced The Limitations Of The System And Innovation

If laws cannot be successfully circulated to different levels publicly, timely and fluently, they can hardly be implemented and obeyed Description of the legal publication system of Qing dynasty in this study provides the basic idea that to what extent officials and citizens at that time were supposed to know and actually knew the laws. This study describes the publication system of several legal sources in Qing dynasty, including the collected statutes, penal code, penal regulations, administrative regulations, and ordinances. Pros and cons of these legal sources are shown in the narration. The deficiency of legal publication system in Qing dynasty is closely related to clerks'cheating. Although from the traditional perspective, clerks'cheating was mostly attributed to the huge quantity of regulations, ordinances and cases, one may find that opacity of laws is the direct cause instead, by looking into the operation of legal publication system in Qing dynasty.This article consists of four chapters. In Chapter One, there is introduction to the requirements of officials'legal knowledge, as well as measures prescribed to inform citizens of import rules. The purpose of Chapter One is to show the ideal picture of official and citizen's familiarity of laws, which can be used as criteria to evaluate the following legal publication system.In Chapter Two, there is description of publication system of the collected statutes, penal code, penal regulation, and administrative regulation. These four are conventionally regarded as the major legal sources in Qing dynasty. Compilation and printing are of much significance to the definition of these four legal sources.In Chapter Three, there is discussion of ordinance in Qing dynasty. Although ordinance is not conventionally seen as important as the four major legal sources above, I view it as the most popular legal source during Qing dynasty, considering its publication status. However, opacity of ordinance leads to clerks'cheating, a dead hand of Qing's bureaucracy. It is shown in comparative study that legal publication system of Qing heavily lacked transparency.In Chapter Four, there is discussion on two reforms of legal publication system in late Qing. One is after the execution of Treaty of Jiangning, and the other is after the commencement of Constitution Preparation in late Qing. Change of Qing government's attitude toward legal publication can be found in these two reforms. The Qing government intended to promote transparency in legal publication system by following western countries example.