A Study On The Trial Accountability System Of The Judicial Officers In The Qing Dynasty

The impartial exercises of juridical power are fundamental to the stability of people’s personal and property rights,along with juridical trails which are the ultimate guarantee for maintaining national stability,social developments,and economic prosperity.As the executors of judicial power,judicial officials are of vital importance to the interests of the state and the people whether they can hear cases in accordance with fairness and justice.Regarding the research on the Trial Accountability System of Judicial Officials in the Qing Dynasty,most of the academic predecessors have conducted their monographic studies merely on one of the multiple specific aspects of the entire system,or elaborated the system via some relevant articles that based on a certain code.It is to admit,that a holistic and integrated study of the said system is yet a field to be explored.Ergo,this thesis selects the Trial Accountability System of Judicial Officials in the Qing Dynasty as its object of study.The study is done through the comprehensive use of the historical textual materials of the Qing Dynasty’s statutes,decrees,regulations,etc.,accompanied by historical case records,endeavoring to present a panorama of the said system.In total,this thesis is divided into 6 parts:Part I,Introduction.This part chiefly introduces the related concepts of the thesis,the origin of the topic selection,reviews to the academic history,it’s research value and methods,and above all,innovations.The introduction first summarizes the research outputs of the predecessors,then points out their inadequacies,e.g.lack of the integrated study on the Trial Accountability System of Judicial Officials,incomplete usages of historical textual materials of the system,failure to combine historical case records to corroborate their claims,etc..On these basis,this thesis undertakes the study on two aspects by comprehensively using the historical textual materials of relevant systems while combining historical cases,seeking to conduct an integrated study of this subject.Part II,the Chapter 1 of the thesis:the composition of judicial officials and the trial system in the Qing Dynasty.Judicial officials are the object of trial accountability,and the trial procedure is directly related to the trial accountability model of judicial officials,thus it is firstly explained in the body.This chapter first introduces the categories of central and local judicial officials in the Qing Dynasty,That is,The establishment and judicial authority of both the central judicial officer,constituted of the officials of the ministry of penalty,the Court of Censors,the supreme court Tang’guan,along with local judicial officials,constituted of governor,grand coordinators,Anchashi,Fu,Zhou,Xian Zhengyinguan.The chapter next introduces the judicial trial procedures of the Qing Dynasty.The Qing Dynasty implemented the trial mode of transferring the case from the grassroots to the central authority level by level;Zhou and Xian was responsible for hearing and adjudicating the cases of “Chi”(whip with bamboo rod)and “Zhang”(beating with heavy bamboo),and conducting the first instance for the cases above the sentence of imprisonment;Fu was in charge of the second instance for cases of “Tu”(Imprisonment),“Liu”(Exile),and “Si”(Death)sentence;Anchashisi managed the third instance for cases of exile and death sentence,along with the reviews of the cases of Imprisonment sentence;governor or grand coordinators then conducted the fourth instance for cases of death sentence,and reviews for cases of Exile sentence;The ministry of penalty administered the approvals of the verdicts of Exile conducted by governor and grand coordinators,and,in accordance with the imperial decrees,the concluding of the fifth instance in collaboration with the Court of Censors and the supreme court.The verdict they concluded,after the approval of the Emperor,is the final verdict.The Death sentence approved by the emperor,if it was “Lijue”(execute immediately),would be executed immediately,the rest would be determined by the “Qiushen”(autumn trial)and the “Zhaoshen”(morning trial)procedures.Part III,the Chapter 2 of the thesis:the source of law and the limitation of application of the Trial Accountability System of Judicial Officials in the Qing Dynasty This chapter mainly summarizes and sorts out the institutional provisions of the Qing Dynasty’s law on accountability of judicial officials.This chapter is of paramount importance of this thesis.First,it briefly introduces the basic sources of law of the Trial Accountability System of Judicial Officials in the Qing Dynasty:“Laws and regulations of the Qing Dynasty” and “Collected Statutes of the Qing Dynasty” and their regulations and examples,the contents and development history of several codes and separate regulations such as “the administrative sanctions of Qing Dynasty”.Thereafter,based on the relevant contents of the aforementioned codes and separate regulations,based on "Laws and regulations of the Qing Dynasty" and "the administrative sanctions of Qing Dynasty",the author develops his specific discussions respectively of various cases when judicial officials should be held accountable for administrative and criminal trials in Qing Dynasty.Part IV,the Chapter 3 of the thesis:the practices of the Trial Accountability System of Judicial Officials in the Qing Dynasty.In this chapter,the author selects the imperial approved cases related to the investigation of trial accountability documented in the "The Veritable Records of the Qing",through case studies,attempting to conduct a preliminary study on the actual operation of the trial accountability system for judicial officials in the Qing Dynasty.In this chapter,ten cases in "The Veritable Records of the Qing" are selected and analyzed.The reason for adopting such a research method is that the Qing Dynasty was a Great Unified Dynasty with centralization of authority and its political system matured and finalized earlier on.Its legal system is highly consistent and unified in both time and space,therefore a small number of cases can also show the running status of the trial accountability system.Moreover,due to the limited length of the thesis and my own energy,it is difficult to comprehensively sort out the vast historical materials of the Qing Dynasty.Thus,the author has selected only a small number of cases in this thesis to conduct a preliminary and superficial inquiry to the trial accountability system in Qing Dynasty.Furthermore,under the political system of the Qing Dynasty,the accountability of officials generally needed to be decided by the emperor himself.Therefore,the representativeness and typicality of the “Yupi”(with imperial approvals)cases contained in the "The Veritable Records of the Qing” are rather powerful.In this chapter,the author first introduces the characteristics and overview of the Yupi cases contained in the “The Veritable Records of the Qing”.The author then selects the relevant cases in the "The Veritable Records of the Qing" for the accountability of judicial officials for infringing the personal rights of the litigants,and delves into the legal application and accountability procedures of such cases.In the end of the chapter,the author selects the relevant cases in which judicial officials were investigated for violations of the law,thus according to the different manners of prosecuting and punishing of the involved judicial officials,subdividing this part of the case into two types for the later inquiries:cases that judicial officials were held accountable for administrative responsibility,and cases that judicial officials were held accountable for criminal responsibility.In this chapter,through the analysis of the actual cases,a preliminary study on the implementation of the trial accountability system in the Qing Dynasty is conducted.Part V,Chapter 4 of the thesis:The characteristics and assessments of the Trial Accountability System of Judicial Officials in the Qing Dynasty.This chapter first summarizes the characteristics of the trial accountability system in the Qing Dynasty,including 4 aspects:the comprehensive use of multi-level accountability methods,distinguishing the responsibility according to the trial level,high degree of legalization of trial accountability,and the emperor’s status of finality in the accountability system.The author then summarizes the three achievements of the very system,including maintaining the fairness of the judicial trial and the unitarity of the legal system,cleaning the bureaucratic administration,mitigating social conflicts,maintaining social order,and promoting social and economic development.Ultimately,the author elaborates the limitations of the system and points out that under the influence of 3 factors,which are the political system of absolute imperial power,integration of administrative and judicial powers,and the one-person model of the most basic level of administration,the trial accountability system for judicial officials in the Qing Dynasty could solely play a positive role that was inevitably limitedPart VI,the epilogue.This part sums up the viewpoints of the whole thesis,and recapitulates the lessons and enlightenment left by the Trial Accountability System of Judicial Officials in the Qing Dynasty.