A Note on Civil Cases in Early China

摘要

Civil cases usually involve disputes over property. They are "civil" because they seekremedies for individuals, as opposed to criminal cases that punish crimes in order topreserve the public order. Generally speaking, historians have overlooked the existenceof civil litigation and arbitration in early China, tending to see law there as restricted to thecriminal and the administrative. For instance, the preeminent Japanese legal historian, ObaOsamu-)K-pa--0 (1927-2003) cites approvingly the judgment of Tanaka Kaoru W Fri A, whocharacterized the unique legal system of China as the luting T system, which dividedthe laws into two types: the lii concerning the punishment of criminals and the ling corre-sponding to administrative laws) Neither Oba nor Tanaka seriously considered the possi-bility that civil law may have existed in early China. The famous expert on Han law, A. E P.Hulsewe (1910-1993), shared the same view, writing