Impartial Trial And Imprisonment—The Study That He's Father And Son Composed Hard Cases Collection

Hard Cases Collection composed by He Ning and He Meng who lived in Five Dynasties and Early Song Dynasty is the earliest extant collection of case studies in China.It records the difficult cases undone from the Spring and Autumn period to Five Dynasties.The cases describe the beginning and end of the trial from inquisitionists,focusing on logical reasoning with common sense,and introduces the experience of judicial inspection accordingly.It lays a foundation on the emergence of numerous "forensic" works and the case collections after the Song and Yuan Dynasties.The first author——He Ning,lived in the Five Dynasties.He set out on the Hard Cases Collection when he was an official in the Ministry of Justice.His son,named He Meng,was also served in the Ministry of Justice during the Northern Song Dynasty.He was another author,who added many cases to his father's original work and divided it into three volumes.The work of historical value and criminal experience was comprised by the efforts of the father and son.It not only collects a large amount of historical materials,but also includes judicial and criminal experiences that make a great difference to the judicial bureaucrats who controlling the life and death of common people.However,the current researches of He Ning and He Meng as well as the Hard Cases Collection are relatively weak.As far as the book itself is concerned,the historians pay less attention.Whereas,there are some related researches in the judicial field,but all of them are limited in length and read somewhat like no more than an introduction,so the research depth is far from enough.The first author,He Ning,served as prime minister in the later Jin Dynasty,and he was such a representative figure of the Flowery School that was concerned by scholars of literature and history.He Ning and Feng Dao were considered to produce the most profound political influences to the early Song Dynasty.In addition,the researchers of ancient literature have progressed deep researches on He Ning's literary achievements and have made great achievements.This article will not repeat them.However,the second author of the Hard Cases Collection has not yet entered the public eye and have not attracted sufficient attention from the academic community.The article is divided into three parts.The first part deals with the life of He Meng and He Ning,and discusses the subjective and objective incentives that led to the composition of the Hard Cases Collection.He Ning is a practical bureaucrat and cares for civilians.We can get it by investigating his political resume.The work experience of the Ministry of Justice made him be aware of the importance of improving the capacity of the judicial bureaucrats to redress injustice.In addition,in the Five Dynasties,the grassroots judicial bureaucrats group formed and stabilized gradually.In the Song Dynasty,He Ning's young son,He Meng once served in the the Ministry of Justice,accumulating extensive social work experience.Of course,the stability of the current situation and the advancement of the legal system are all important factors in promoting the publication of the Hard Cases Collection.In addition,the technique of woodblock printing was improved at that time,and He Ning as an enthusiast of woodblock printing used it to retain the work.The second part investigates the sources of the materials and the content characteristics of the Hard Cases Collection.There is no significant difference in the source of materials,all of which can be found from the historical book,the fictional novels,and the experiences of the past.The collection of the criminal fragments from the official history makes the historical materials practical.The authors added reviews based on novels to retain a wealthy historical information.The authors'narrative approach focuses on logicl but slights personnel,so as to highlight the guideline value of the work.The cases in the Hard Cases Collection reflect the characteristics of three levels:First,the exquisite method of evidence collection and reconnaissance.Second,they care about the suffering of people's livelihood.And thirdly,the book contains moral and ethical concepts suach as couples relationship and parent-child relationship.Therefore,we will explore the personal consciousness that He Meng and He Ning injected.The third part studies the propagation and absorption of the Hard Cases Collection.We will demonstrate the feats of the Hard Cases Collection by comparing it with such as Collection of Judging Lawsuit(??????),etc.After the publication of the Hard Cases Collection,it was widely used by judicial officials.They stacked another cases on the basis and added diverse categories to compile a more voluminous collection of cases.At the same time,the judicial officials gradually realized that the timeliness of the compilation of cases was far from enough.So they developed a good habit of recording handling cases and left precious historical data for the study of history.With the gradual completion of the judicial system in the Song Dynasty,judicial officials put forward higher requirements for the inspection process in criminal cases.The autopsy process had been continuously standardized,and the inspection technology had been continuously enriched.These had resulted in the creation of a real forensic book called Record of Redressing Mishandled Cases(??????).Through the comparison of contents,we can find out that the Record of Redressing Mishandled Cases was composed on the basis of the autopsy experience involving in the Hard Cases Collection.The Hard Cases Collection was still highly valued during the Ming and Qing Dynasties.During the Jiajing period,Zhang Jing supplemented the book,and the old work were combined into ten volumes and published again.Xu Jie,a famous official in Jiajing,served as a prefectural judge of the government in Yanping Prefecture.He personally revised and promoted it in Zhejiang.Writings that reflect a certain aspect of Chinese ancient social life such as Hard Cases Collection are too numerous to mention.Influenced by the mainstream research paradigm,these historical data have been hidden in the dark corners of history and have not received enough attention.This is worth of our further thinking and further excavation.