Some Observations on Lawsuit at District Magistrate Office in Qing China: Based on the Danshui-Xinzhu Archives as Source Materials

Abstract

This article is twinning with the same author's another article: Shiga Shuzo, Tanshin toan no shohoteki chishiki: sosho anken ni arawareru bunsho no ruikei (An Elementary Knowlege of the Danshui-Xinzhu Archives: Categories of Documents drawn up in Litigation Cases), in: Toyohoshi no tankyu: Shimada Masao hakase shoju kinen ronshu (Studies in Asian Legal History in Honor of Shimada Masao), Tokyo: Kyuko Shoin, 1987. Its purpose is to throw light on some aspects of traditional Chinese judicial system which can hardly be approached by the study of edited books as source materials and, in fact, dropped from the observations in the same author's former book: Shiga Shuzo, Shindai chugoku no ho to saiban (Law and Justice in Qing China), Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1984.Efforts are made to evaluate the function of government runners who executed various types of warrant: warrants of investigation; of production of documentary evidence; of pressing performance of a duty; of conciliation; of injunction of using force; of summon; of arrest, etc.; and also to analyse in what manner each case comes to an end.In conclusion those points are argued: 1) In discussing litigation practices, it is inadequate to bring merely the process of hearings given by the magistrate sitting in court into focus. The foregoing process conducted by dispatched government runners with warrants in their hands is also important. Both processes were of the same nature as intervention of public authorities in disputes among people and should be taken into account together with each other as a whole. 2) It is also inadequate to treat lawsuit at the magistrate office and mediation among people themselves separately as two things standing in contrast to each other. The former was also nothing but a mediating process in its nature. Both processes used to go on side by side and functioned complementary to each other.