Modernization Of The Republic Of The Property Law

Property law (jus rerum) is the legal system relating to the subject's ownership of the object. It is one of the basic institutions regulating people's social and economic activities. The ancient Chinese law was guided by the thought that morale integrity constitutes the foundation of ruling while criminal punishmentserves as the tool. Therefore, the ancient Chinese codes were all dominated by criminal law and had no distinction between criminal law and civil law. Property law was a part of criminal law in such a legal system. Although property law never became an independent legal institution in ancient China, it had indeed evolved during its long period of development. This could be seen in the right to pawn. After the Opium War, the Chinese property law started its course of modernization driven by the Western legal culture. Due to internal disturbance and foreign aggression in late Qing Dynasty, the notable legal reform at that time took the stance of transferring the Western legal institutions into China. The legislation made by the reformists was actually divorced from reality. During the time of Republic of China, the Chinese traditional property law showed the sign of absorbing the Western property law. The judicial practice played a crucial role in combining the two together. Da Liyuan, the supreme judicial body when Peking government was in power, had created many rules relating to property law through judicial rulings and interpretations in civil law cases, thus pushing the trend of combining the traditional property law and the Western property law even further. Based upon the traditional property law and the Western property law, the modern Chinese property law characterizing both consistence and flexibility had been basically established.