Research On Local Judicial Practice Of The Qing Dynasty Jiaqing Period

"In the Kangxi Qianlong period, the nation is prosperous and the people are strong andpowerful. The rulers of the time implement the policy of ‘The breeding population, neverraise taxes’and ‘Exempt from tax’... To the Daoguang Xianfeng period, the rulers of the timeimplement the policy of open country to foreign trade, the country has many changes. Theway of spending money is wide and earning money is narrow." Jiaqing Dynasty as a specialperiod of the Qing Dynasty turned from prosperity to decline, the problem of backlog of casesand abuse of torture in the judicial practice is very outstanding, which deeply troubled theemperor RenZong and magistrates. What are the causes of this situation? What measuresmagistrates have been adopt? In order to explore the original intention of the judicial practicesituation at the time, the author made a historical investigate of magistrates cases and officialadmonitions achieve local files. Through three important main body magistrates, petty officialand local people to build the logical framework to explore the cause of the problem. Startingfrom the angle of magistrates, the author has carried on the simple combing to thecountermeasures to solve the problem. The purpose of this article was to observe the localjudicial style of Jiaqing period and provide reference for today’s judicial practice.The full text consists of introduction, text and the conclusion three parts.The introduction mainly introduced the origin, research summary and research method.The first part introduced three important main body and their mutual relations in Jiaqingperiod. Focuses on magistrates, petty official and local people’s activity and their mutualrelations in the judicial practice to construct the basic framework of the full text.The second part of the thesis discussed the cause and the countermeasure of the problemin the judicial practice: backlog of cases and abuse of torture. The cause of unsolved casesinclude the following points: lazy atmosphere in groups of magistrates, people frequentlyconfession and complaint, petty official delay the case handling for money fraud, the lack ofmeasures to regulate the witnesses to testify. The cause of abuse of torture includes thefollowing points: magistrates often use torture, petty official often lynching of innocentpeople, some unruly people has contributed to abuse of torture. Through this part of the paper,we can find that there have all kinds of connections with between the formation of backlog ofcases and abuse of torture and the three main activities in the judicial practice. Even the problem of backlog of cases and abuse of torture in some cases will influence each other, thisset up a vicious circle.The third part of the thesis introduced how to solve the above two problems bymagistrates at that time. The first point is to be disciplined. Magistrates uphold the principleof justice, diligent, and cautious governing the behavior of himself and his colleagues. Thesecond point is strictly guard against petty official. By the way of avoiding, supervision andreward to prevent illegal as petty official. The third point is to prevent litigation. By the wayof cultivating people, dismissed complaints, punish evil to control the source of litigation. Thefourth and the fifth is the requirements on trial standards, that is be rational and alternateleniency with severity.The conclusion: the author think that although magistrates’s countermeasures accordingto the above two problems have limitations, but it still provide a useful reference for today’slegal workers.