Yang Feng And Yin Violation: The Evasion Strategy Of Local Officials Under The Qing Dynasty Review System

To deal with serious crimes involving murder and theft in localities, Qing Dynasty formulated the re-trial and re-examination system that combined the functions of supervision and centralization, but the inspection into local judicial practices in Qing Dynasty shows that the local re-trial and re-examination system failed to reach its intended goals and even got deviated because under this system, local officials more often than not took a series of avoidance strategies to get rid of the constraints of the system. This dissertation aims to study avoidance strategies that adopted by local officials in Qing Dynasty. We summarized its main strategies as well as its specific means through the relevant legal texts, archives and cases. Then we analyze the reasons and its significance.This dissertation is divided into five sections.The introduction describes academic history of the topics related to review, research key concepts, the basic historical data and research approach.Chapter ? is about System Design of the re-trial and re-examination system and its design concept. System Design includes two aspects, the history of the system and specific provisions in Qing Dynasty. Design concept is discussed from two aspects, power control and cautious punishment. The system aim to maintain the balance between power control and cautious punishment.Chapter ? is about avoidance strategies that adopted by local officials in Qing Dynasty. Specifically, one of these measures was to strike at the roots of these cases, i.e. to completely exclude them out of the system or control them within local jurisdiction through concealment or private settlement; the second was to practice deception, i.e. to revise judicial documents to perfection so that they could not be rejected by higher levels; the third was to collude with superiors and inferiors, i.e. to form interest groups through various channels and seek the protection of superiors.Chapter ? is about the game analysis. Under the guidance of game theory, we build game model that about the design and operation of system and solve it. Cost-benefit imbalance leads to the institution disequilibrium. It is inefficient that only enhance penalties, what's more, the high strength makes it worse.Concluding remarks reviews the text and contemporary significance. A necessary remedy lies on judges' nature as social person and economic person,and harmonizing judges' interests with justice through well-designed procedural rules,which will be internalized as judges' spontaneous action and eventually con-form institutions to actors.