A Study On The Phenomenon Of Ancient Chinese Master Of Litigation

The existence of master of litigation are unique phenomena in ancient China,traditional legal and political culture they represent behind them are very characteristic and can not be ignored.Although the master of litigation did exist in the traditional Chinese legal culture for a long time,but the policy of single centralized political structure and consciousness penetrated into all aspects of society,together with the ruling group to implement the "no litigation" expectation which made the master of litigation embarrassingly been refused and rejected by authority.Except for the great development of economy and the rise of study of litigation in Song Dynasty which officials of government were forced to accept the lawful existence of writing shops,strict prohibitions to activities by master of litigation were implemented by almost every dynasty,Qing and Ming Dynasty were even worse.With the meddling of western forces in late Qing dynasty,Chinese legal system was replaced by western culture.The ethical wall consist by the traditional political was shrinking with impact of foreign culture and gradually faded in the dust of history.Lawyer system in the late Qing Dynasty was firstly introduced to China by the "Su Bao"case.From then on,the legitimacy of lawyers have been accepted and established in China.Lawyers play an important role in the process of making our country realize the social order of rule of law.This article is divided into four parts.The first part starts with the general understanding of modern lawyers,and majorly analyzes the actual image of the master of litigation in ancient society,and then interpret the different connotations of them according to historical records.The second part introduces the social position of the master of litigation from four aspects:the communicating bridge between government and citizens.They offered help by writing writs for citizens and telling them skills in lawsuits and interacting with authority to avoid unfavorable situation.These activities of the them were actually played significantly important role in communication with the "big tradition" which represented bureaucratic elite and the "small tradition" which represented civil society through their legal knowledge and cultural literacy and non-official identity.Although the activities of the master of litigation were prohibited by the government,but its existence is inevitable.The third part is mainly about the reasons why authority suppressed activities of master of litigation from three aspects:the implementation of the concept of "no lawsuits",the unquestionable doubts and the challenge toward the authority,and the"justice view" of the Confucian classics.The fourth part begins with "Su Bao" case,and then introduces the recognition and introduction of the lawyer system in late Qing government.Master of litigation's activities were replaced by lawyers.Conservative bureaucrats were still worried that lawyers were master of litigation's new version,they were strongly against them.The traditional inertia makes the establishment of lawyer system quite difficult in China,there are still a lot of people hold the opinion that lawyers and master of litigation were the same.Although there were some similarities among them at a certain degree,huge differences between them still existed only by meaningful comparison on the grounds of different backgrounds.In this part,the author compares the ancient Chinese master of litigation with the representative Britain lawyer system at four points as follows:backgrounds,legal status,social functions and the differences between two groups.The difference between master of litigation and British lawyers is not just a matter of institutional aspects,but also for the different political and legal cultural traditions.Comparisons not only enhance understanding but also are helpful to our lawyer system.