The twelve case studies in Chinese Law: Knowledge, Practice and Transformation, 1530s to 1950s, edited by Li Chen and Madeleine Zelin, open a new window onto the historical foundation and transformation of Chinese law and legal culture in late imperial and modern China. Their interdisciplinary analyses provide valuable insights into the multiple roles of law and legal knowledge in structuring social relations, property rights, popular culture, imperial governance, and ideas of modernity; they also provide insight into the roles of law and legal knowledge in giving form to an emerging revolutionary ideology and to policies that continue to affect China to the present day.
Li Chen, J.D. (Illinois 2002), Ph.D. (Columbia 2009), is Assistant Professor of History and Sociolegal Studies at University of Toronto. His publications on law and history include Chinese Law in the Imperial Eyes: Sovereignty, Justice, and Transcultural Politics, c. 1740s-1840s (Columbia University Press, forthcoming 2015)
Madeleine Zelin, Ph.D. (1979) University of California at Berkeley, is Dean Lung Professor of Chinese Studies at Columbia University. She has published monographs, translations and articles on China, including The Merchants of Zigong: Industrial Enterprise in Early Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2005)
Introduction: Ways of Rethinking Chinese Law and History
Part I. Meaning and Practice of Law
Chapter 1. Classifications of Litigation and Implications for Qing Judicial Practice
– Jianpeng Deng
Chapter 2. Kinship Hierarchies and Property Institutions in Late-Qing and Republican China
– Taisu Zhang
Chapter 3. Social Practice and Judicial Politics in “Grave Destruction” Cases in Qing Taiwan, 1683-1895
– Weiting Guo
Chapter 4. Elite Engagement with the Judicial System in the Qing and its Implications for Legal Practice and Principle
– Janet Theiss
Chapter 5. “Law Is One Thing, and Virtue Is Another”: Vernacular Readings of Law and Legal Process in 1920s Shanghai
– Bryna Goodman
Chapter 6. Wayward Daughters: Sex, Family, and Law in Early Twentieth-Century Beijing
– Zhao Ma
Part II. Production and Application of Legal Knowledge
Chapter 7. The Community of Legal Experts in 16th- and 17th-Century China
– Yanhong Wu
Chapter 8. Marketing Legal Information: Commercial Publications of the Great Qing Code, 1644-1911
– Ting Zhang
Chapter 9. Contestation over Legal Knowledge and Limits of Imperial Power in Qing China
– Li Chen
Chapter 10. Court Case Ballads: Popular Ideals of Justice in Late Qing and Republican China
– Margaret Wan
Chapter 11. Old Forensics in Practice: Investigating Suspicious Deaths and Administering Justice in Republican Beijing
– Daniel Asen
Chapter 12. Simplified Legal Knowledge in the Early PRC: Explaining and Publishing the Marriage Law
– Jennifer Altehenger
All interested in the history of Chinese legal culture and history or the transformation of late imperial Chinese society, law, culture, and politics, or comparative law and politics.