Mirror For Adjudication: Ancient Chinese Judicial System Studies

The Mirror for Adjudication is a collection of cases created by ZHENG Ke on the basis of the collection of doubtful prisons.It contains 395 case stories from the spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period to the period of Daguan and Zhenghe in the Northern Song Dynasty.The source of the cases is very wide,including both the biography of the official history and the folk novels.Through the ancient and modern cases of the same reason,we can give the ancient officials reference and inspiration to solve the problems of the common officials' keeping the law,the lack of the mediocre officials and so on,and reduce the occurrence of the wrong cases.No matter the officials of Song Dynasty or later generations,they can benefit a lot from the Mirror for Adjudication.Reading the " Mirror for Adjudication ",we can have a preliminary understanding of the ancient Chinese judicial system.The first part of this paper introduces the author ZHENG Ke's basic situation and the creation background of the book,and analyzes the social background of the book from the economic,political and cultural aspects of the Song Dynasty;the second part introduces the methods of prison break embodied in the book,and classifies the methods of prison break into three categories: one is the method of prison break based on verbal evidence;the other is the method of prison break based on verbal evidence The third part discusses the characteristics of the methods of prison break in prison break in the book of prison break,which are strict application of law,prudence and idealism.