Research On Song Trial Separation System

Song Dynasty’s Trial Separation System is a kind of unique and perfect judicial system.Among the whole Chinese ancient judicial systems,only Song Dynasty extremely attached importance to the trial system,and constantly improved it during its development process.The uniqueness of the Song Dynasty’s Trial Separation System reflected in that Tuisi Department was in charge of hearing of the case while Fasi Department was responsible for inspecting methods about punishment.There are different kinds of person taking charge and undertaking different judicial responsibilities in Tuisi Department and Fasi Department.There never had a dynasty that had proceeded such a delicate institutional settings.Its institutional settings could prevent the judicial officials from committing illegalities for personal gains,and guarantee cases get a fair trial.Trial Separation System in Song Dynasty had been strictly observed and executed.Institutions adopting judicial separation was not only the central judicial institutions but also the regional judicial institutions.The central judicial institutions adopting judicial separation included Marble Temple,Ministry of Penalty and Censorate.The regional judicial institutions mainly contained Kai Fengfu and judicial offices of the state level.Song Dynasty adopted the Trial Separation System would certainly used to change and develop the trial procedures corresponding to the cases.The procedures of Song Dynasty Trial Separation, in the process of the specific case,generally is the same,which reflected in that Tuisi Department was in charge of clearly reviewed the facts of the case,and then inspected methods about punishment by Fasi Department,finally set the sentence by the ephors.When putting each specific judicial institution into effect,each institution would set a unique judicial institution.But there are differences about its judicial functions between each different institutions. As Tuisi Department and Fasi Department both were in charge of hearing a same case,so when misjudged cases happened,the relationship of responsibility between them would be different by condition.That is to say the responsibility between them were not the same.Then Trial Separation System would encounter some difficulties during its process of implementation,such as Tuisi Department’s activities of examining law would cause a kind of effect of preconception to an ephor making independent judgement.and Tuisi Department and Fasi Department would make the same legal documents and the like problems.In order to solve these problems,through governmental functions issued assizes to forbid Fasi Department to make imitation’s opinions but to strengthen its management during the interrogated process. The reason why Song Dynasty adopted and implemented Trial Separation System was caused by strengthen its centralization as to consolidate the imperial power and its cautious punishment ideas and so on.The system emphasized to realize the separation of powersjudicial supervision judicial justice and the value concept of cautious punishment.Meanwhile,it also had some significant limitation,which mainly reflected in efficiency and other issues.Although the Song Dynasty Separation System is a judicial system conflicted with the modern judicial principle and spirit,and it gave a significant inspiration to modern judicial system in a certain extent. Such as increasing judicial institution internal checks and balances, to increase specialized judicial supervision institutions,changing traditional judicial supervision methods and strengthen judicial independence and judge’s independence.