The Military Officials’ Crimes And The Judicial Practice In Ming Dynasty

The civil officials establish and execute the polices,while the military officers keep the country in good order.Administering a country need civil and military officials to move as one from of old,because both of them have their respective powers and play various roles. We can not ignore the important function of the military officers in the fields, their capacity and whether obey the law affect the power of the country.The criminal of the military officers in Ming dynasty have affluences on every aspects of the society,at the same time,there were defferencs between the punishments on criminal of the military officers and the executions.The effective of the military law fell into a decline,and the military officers acted against law and reason,which result in poor fighting capacity and caused many problems.The article is based on＜A Collection of Typed Rules and Regulations in the Ming Dynasty＞, study ing of the military officials’crimes, inquiring into the expression of law and judicial practice,which is divided into four parts.The first part introduces the classification of the military officers’criminal behavers. The criminal types were abundant and involved many sides, which could be roughly divided into four kinds,such as Economic Crime, Criminal Acts of Abusing Authority,Criminal Offence and Violation of a Moral.The second part concentrates on discussing the judiciary proceedings and adjudication methods against military criminals,which mainly consists of the establishmengt of military judicial organs in the early Ming dynasty and then an occurrence the judicial power weakening. The condition or quality of the judicial organs became intricate and in confusion in the middle and later periods of the Ming dynasty, which influenced independence, consistency, impartiality and seriousness in military judicial trial. Lastly, the particularity of military court proceedings were briefly introduced. In the third part, I try my best to do an analysis of the punishment of military officers’guilts. This part take Economic Crime, Criminal, Acts of Abusing Authority,Criminal Offence and Violation of a Moral as its storyline,as well as explaining the specification of the legislative bill or enactment for a crime against property, the subversion of the government or an armed rebellion, taking the liberty of using soldiers, being defeated in combat, guilty of murder, corruption of public morals and so on. The punitive measures changed from death or execution by hanging or exile or serving a prison term to fine penalty or perform meritorious services to atone for one’s crime or being dismissed.In the fourth part, there would be an analysis of judicial practice that the Court-martial sentence to the criminal of the military officers based on case study.Although the judicial officers must abide by the rules when they decided a case according to the Ming Legal Statutes, the inappropriate choices of judgment were very common. An emperor could overturn the judicial decision under his thumb, even a high official got in the way. In addition to the punishment was proportioned to the crime, the commutation of punishment or exemption from punishment, or punishment exceeded the crime were prevalent. So there was a big gap between the enactment states and the judicial practice.All in all,the problems of the criminal of the military officers came down to several domains,sunch as military, judiciary and political affairs,as well as social changes of Late Ming Dynasty. The conclusion will reflecte government by law in Ming dynasty and these problems which were relevant to the criminal of the military officers.