Criminal Procedure in Eighteenth-Century China: The Qing Judiciary in Action

FAIN: FEL-288361-23

Matthew Sommer
Stanford University (Stanford, CA 94305-2004)

Research and writing leading to a book on criminal procedure in 18th-century China, based on archival records of 5000 court cases.

I propose a book about criminal procedure in 18th-century China based on 5000 court cases already collected from historical archives. My goal is basic, yet vital: to use concrete case studies--of torture, confession, autopsy, review, appeals, imprisonment, and punishment--to show how the judiciary worked in practice, and from the standpoint of practice to reflect back on its normative claims. No book like the one I propose exists in any language: past scholarship largely depends on normative texts that do not reflect actual practice. I have two foils: an old Orientalist stereotype of China as “a realm of cruelty,” and a Chinese Communist stereotype of the imperial era as “the cannibalistic old society.” In fact, the criminal justice system of the 18th century compares favorably both to its contemporaries and to that of China today. One goal is to suggest how China’s own legal tradition might be the basis for reform, especially with regard to torture, review, and capital punishment.