Research On The Legal System Of The Western Han Dynasty Land Sale

Western Han dynasty is the initial phase of the feudal society of China both whosepolitics and law inherited and derived that of Qin dynasty with gradually improving toinfluence profoundly the later ages. When coming to the system of law of Western Handynasty academia tend to study the criminal and political laws more than the civil law.Research on the purchase and sales of land is hardly saw. This paper intends to do deep searchsystematically on the land purchase and sales law of Western Han dynasty from theperspective of the law history combined with relative theory of the modern civil law byabsorbing the research findings of the land purchase and sales law of Western Han dynasty.Based on the relative theory of modern civil land agreement laws the purchase and sale ofland issue can be divided into three parts.The first part will discuss on the problem from the two perspectives of civil subjectivitiesparticipating in land exchange and the corresponding stipulations in Western Han laws. Andwith reference to the theory adapted by the feudal society to divide the landlord and peasantclasses the subjectivity and object involved into the purchase and sales of land were alsodivided into the landlord and peasant classes and carefully study them respectively. On theother way the government of Western Han as a special civil object participated in the purchaseand sales of land as well who carried out a set of legal rules in order to regulate the distinctcivil objects. Specially Western Han is an agriculture-foremost society who drafted a series oflaws and degrees and at the ages of Hanaidi emperor a complete set of legal regulations in thepolicy of restriction on land were formed to retrain the merchants participating in landexchange.The second part will focused on further study of objectives involved in purchase andsales of land. Objectives of land exchange or rather objects of buying and selling of landincluded the state-owned and private land according to the references such as Hanshu Recordsof grand history of China and land exchange vouchers. The state-owned land was forbidden toexchange to be in effective control of land and stealing and selling land is illegal. And thetransaction of the state-owned land was seldom saw. And instead more private land were onsales and for purchase. The private land came from varieties of paths of which land dispensedby the country was a substantial component. The key to research the problem of purchase and sales of land dispensed by the country is whether the private land is enable to be purchasableand marketable. Consequently the model of land transaction became more trivial. The otherhand the amount of private land exchange is restricted legally which demonstrated that thegovernment tried to administrate strictly the land transaction and maintain the rules of land.The third part will explain the purchase and sales of land law of Western Han in terms ofthe content requirements and function of a valid contract of land exchange. The main contentof the contract of purchase and sales of land was composed of litigant date of contract agreedon subject matter warranty responsibility on flaws witness payment mode. The furtheranalysis of contract of purchase and sales of land testified that it had contained the fourrequirements of a valid contract.The contract of purchase and sales of land is not only acertificate of ownership of land but also an important basis used by the official to resolvedisputes of purchase and sales of land. In order to regulate the buying and selling of land thegovernment of Western Han took the three measures including registration of land enactingcrimes and accepting lawsuits of disputes of land exchange to provide civil subjectivities withthe public aid.This paper would try to make it possible to combine the subjectivity with objective withreference of reliable historical reference when studying the law of purchase and sales of landof Western Han under the current historical context to void to be out the context.