| China is a country, which advocates upright officials. The country patriots generally have a deep honest-and-upright-official complex and they call some officials who have excellent characteristics, can enforce the law impartially and don’t fear the power and wealth as upright officials, whose spirits and achievements are discussed enthusiastically and widely eulogized by common people. They become other officials’ role models and people’s trust. Centering on the Tang Yin Bi Shi, written by Gui Wanrong in Song dynasty, based on analyzing 144 judicial cases in the Tang Yin Bi Shi, this paper concludes the internal relation between the Tang Yin Bi Shi and the upright officials, systemizes the activities of one of the upright officials, concludes the common grounds of such upright officials during the process of settling lawsuits and tries to dig out the upright officials’ upright judicial skills shown in the process of judicial activities in the Tang Yin Bi Shi based on these common grounds so as to offer helpful references for our current judicial practice activities and to promote the realization of the ideas of judicial fairness and justice.After analyzing and concluding the cases in the Tang Yin Bi Shi, we have a rough understanding about the ancient trial of skill skills, namely, interrogation skill, strategy skill and case trial skill. Firstly, it is the interrogation skill. Interrogation is an important link for judicial activities. China’s ancient judiciaries comprehensively used many methods to interrogate while settling a case; the most principal methods are the "skill of five hearings" and inquisition by torture. Therefore, the study in the interrogation skill of upright officials cannot be separated with the study in the "skill of five hearings" and inquisition by torture. After studies, we found that the upright officials can well use the "skill of five hearings" in most cases and can also show their extraordinary abilities frequently. Such abilities to use the "skill of five hearings" were praised as "being perceptive of the slightest" by people. The upright officials also performed differently with other judiciaries in "inquisition by torture". They didn’t advocate too many tortures but used tortures as an auxiliary means and made the parties involved in cases to speak the truth of matter through threatening, intimidation and other ways. The "skill of five hearings" and "inquisition by torture" are certainly not separate. As excellent representatives of judiciaries, the upright officials did very well in comprehensively using such methods and they were also the models of comprehensive use. Secondly, it is the strategy skill. Strategies reveal more of the upright officials’ individual abilities. They often detected cases via their good individual knowledge and acute insight, especially the use of trickery, which not only demanded that the upright officials do well in grasping the mental state the parties involved but also demanded that they did well in the use of strategies to grasp chances. Apart from the use of trickery, they often used miraculous judgment to solve cases. However, we also found miraculous judgments in the studies of such cases in the Tang Yin Bi Shi, but the author’s records for upright officials’ miraculous judgments didn’t mean to publicize the power of god but to show the judiciaries’ conscientious and honest judicial spirit in the interrogation process. Lastly, it is the case trial skill. Through studies of upright officials in judicial practices, find out why the upright officials can find the balance point between legal principle and emotive reason. The upright officials’law enforcement has the duality:on one hand, they tried their best to defend the authority of law; on the other hand, they didn’t reject emotive reasons, which is an important feature of upright officials’ judicial skills in case trial. However, in the studies of the upright officials’ judicial skills, we cannot neglect their value pursuits. Although the judiciaries’judicial levels are related with the judicial persons’ individual quality, individual ability, case handling experience and other factors, many judiciaries had such factors in ancient China. But only seldom such judiciaries can become upright officials. The root to the problem is their different value pursuits, which are also the origins of upright officials’ judicial skills. |
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