A Research Of Philip C.c.huang's Legal History And Legal Anthropology

Philip C.C.Huang is a world-class scholar in the field of Chinese legal history research and chinese legal anthropology since the 1990 s.He has published a series of works,which brought about widespread attention and discussion of scholars at home and abroad.His major achievement in the legal research are reflected in Civil Justice in China: Represent and Practice in the Qing?Code,Custom and Legal Practice in China: The Qing and the Republic Compared and The Past and The Present: Chinese Civil Justice in Practice.These three books compose his trilogy for studying Chinese legal issues.This article focuses on these three works to try to analyze his original contributions.Specifically,we can explore and confirm his contributions of legal history research and legal anthropology from theory and methodology.It is hoped that this research will be beneficial to the future research of Chinese legal history and Chinese legal anthropology.From the perspective of Braudel's long-term concept,Huang's three works involve a historical period from the Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China and then to the present.this period is the last stage of the empire and the beginning of Chinese modernization,which is also the key stage of introducing western legal thought and system.In the time,china wants to integrate with world and preserve himself at the same time.Huang's research purpose is to present the process that china think about the world and reflect on himself through it.he started Specifically from three aspects: the legal system,the dispute settlement mechanism,and legal thinking,to paint a vivid and abundant appearance of Chinese law and its practice.Unlike previous stereotypes,Huang demonstrates the paradox of Qing's legal present and practice.Most scholars previously believed that the yamen,government office in feudal china,handles disputes through mediation,but the research of Huang shows that the yamen makes a clean judgment,and there is a third real between civil mediation and official trial.He shows the combination of practical and moral legal thinking by the legal practice.From the Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China,he discovered that the change of the law is not a simple binary transition as shown in the text,actual y it has continuity and change.The current legal system is the combination of substantive andformalism,is a fusion of the tradition,west and the MAO era.Huang believes that we should not focus our research on the separation and opposition between legal history and departmental law,China and the West,tradition and modernization.the binary argument has some problems,which hinders our exploration and understand ing of the truth of Chinese legal history.On the basis of concrete empirical research,Huang designed,used and refined a series of concepts to form an abundant theoretical explanation system,which enriched Chinese legal history research and Chinese legal anthropology.His research also bring vigor and expand the research space for them.These concepts concludes the third real,semi-formal governance,and Practical moralism etc.He also burst out many real insights to recognize china through dialogue with the mainstream of Chinese and western cognition.In terms of methodology,he first proposed the research method of combining files,literature and fieldwork.secondly,he reintroduced anthropological theory into the study of legal history.finally,he advocated a practical perspective to observe Chinese law and Chinese society.This perspective of practice is not only emphasis practice,which also pays attention to theory,present and system as opposed to practice.In short,his research has both the academic attention of legal history and the question consciousness of anthropology.He is the only scholar who can combine both in the past 30 years.Maybe we should regard his research as an epistemological tool,such an understanding seems more appropriate.If this is true,Huang's research helps us see the transition from traditional China to modern China.In his research,the law is a window to understand China.With this window opened by Huang,we can see that China has a different historical process of modernization compared with the rest of the world.