Sociology Of Law, The Petition System

China's petitioning system is one social system with Chinese unique characteristics, and it has been for about half of centenary. In past, China's petitioning system has played an important role in China, but accompany the development of whole society, it is confronting many difficulties and challenges. Because its unique characteristics, China's petitioning system has one kind of symbol significant. so the analysis of China's petitioning system through legal-sociology, can help us not only know something objective about its history, present situation, and future, but also have some perspective of the society. The paper is composed of six sections: Preface: provides a simple definition of "system", and states the significant and methods of the paper. Chapter one: introduction. In the first, "xinfang" and "shangfang" are distinguished; and examine the like performances of ancient China and foreign countries, as a result, the characteristics of China's petitioning system are distinguished. Chapter tow: the historical interpretation of China's petitioning system. In this section, in order to reveal some law of China's petitioning system and influences of other factors on it through historical study. So this chapter analyses the history through its mechanism, norm, and the amount of cases. And interprets it through the changing of society, the history of legislation, and the development of economy. Chapter three: the roles interpretation of China's petitioning system. In this section, try to describe the operation of it through analyzing the roles' performances. In the first, from the petitioners' point, the examination of category and economic analysis of petition are made; after that, this chapter analyses the government's documents. Chapter four: the realistic interpretation of China's petitioning system. First, this chapter describes the difficulties that it confronting now, then analyses the attitudes and reflection of government and scholars, at last, predict its development on the base of objective analysis. Final speech: summarizes the shortcomings of this paper, and reveal the significant of the paper from the relation between "is" and "should". In one words, this paper through the analysis of legal-sociology of China's petitioning system, try to interprets it through society, and at the same time, hope to interprets the society through it.