The Development And Introspection Of Chinese Legal History During 1980s

The legal history of China is a subject of studying Chinese legal history, which explores the inheritance and implementation of legal systems in Chinese history. In ancient China, legal history is an important part in traditional history. In Qing Dynasty, there appeared some scholars who specialized in legal history research, which promoted traditional legal history to transform into modern legal history. In 20th century, New Culture Movement introduced western Capitalism history theory, and then quite a lot of scholars with broad views and rich knowledge researched on Chinese legal history. After People's Republic of China was established, we founded socialism legal systems in term of Soviet Union's. Later, continuous political movements broke the legal system, especially during the time of Culture Revolution.The period of 1980s is a special historical sign to the Chinese legal history academic circle: A great conference was held in Changchun in 1979 after the Cultural Revolution, where the Chinese Legal History Society was set up. Meanwhile, the reconstruction of the subject including recovery and development was discussed so as to continue the academic tradition.This thesis is expected to disclose the regular pattern of the development of Chinese legal history throughout analyzing the results of some representative scholars, exploring the condition and social environment for the subject's growth and summarizing the experience and lesson.It is divided into four parts. The first part introduces the relevant background of Chinese legal history and makes a simple academic review.The second part describes the external interaction between the subject and social environment from the perspective of other subjects, international conferences.The third part aims at the inner developmental way by investigating the progress and shortcomings our scholars have made from the study perspective, methods, results and other aspects.The last part clarifies the characteristics of the 1980s Chinese legal history's study through the comparison with the 1970s and 1990s. In addition, the comparison with Taiwan will be tried. And introspection such as methodological problems, the contradiction between words and things and the references to the traditional law should be noticed.In fact, history study is transcendental and subjective, as all the past is gone and no pure objective fact exists. Accordingly, the key point is how to interpret the history and how to activate the memory buried under the earth in today's modern society.