Chinese Ancient Precedents Characteristics And Functional Analysis

Legal precedent has a long history in ancient china .Legal precedent in traditional Chinese law is an important form of law. It has so many advantages that the statutory law do not have such as its own flexible, timely, intuitive, and played an important part in complementing, modifying, developing and perfecting the law in judicial practice in the past. It is of great referential significance to clarify original situation of the case system in ancient China and analyze its characteristics and functions for the contemporary legal system of our country. This paper is divided into four parts for this research.The first chapter summarizes the development of the case system in ancient China. It payed attention to enacting the statutory law in every dynasties, gradually formating the legal system centered on positive law. However, because of the inadequacy of the legislative enactments and judicial practice, there are cases to complement the positive law. This chapter shows the history of five stages of case in the ancient China from the pre-Qin Dynasty, Qin and Han Dynasties, Sui and Tang dynasties, the Song and Yuan Dynasties, to the Ming and Qing Dynasties.The second chapter deals with the characteristics of the case system in ancient China. It is Mainly divided into three parts, covering the imperial power in ancient China are the source of the effectiveness of the case, ritual is the soul of the case system in ancient China. And It pointed out the status of the case in the ancient law that is the basis and premise of for law, and play a supporting and complementary role to the positive law.The third Chapter discusses the function of cases in ancient China, the political and legal functions. The forth Chapter analyzes the formation and enlightenment of case system in ancient China. Being established in the local resources in ancient China, I discusses what are the enlightenment for the contemporary legal system combined with the reflection of the characteristics and functions.In this paper,the innovation lies in comparing the different historical stages with historical method and comparative method,and use legal precedents to demonstrate the problem. We intent to provide traditional resources for the rule of law.