A Study Of Marriage Law In The Period Of Nanjing National Government

After the Opium War, the Chinese society started its difficult modernize course. But the basis of the modernization bears innate shortcomings and its internal motive force is weak. It's just a passive social transformation. Under this background, it's difficult and tortuous for Nanjing National Government to formulate and enforce the marriage law.The first part of this article mainly analyzes the motivation of making marriage law. During this period, great changes had happened in economy, politics and ideology, which inevitably produced great impacts on the development of marriage system. However, the effect cannot be overstated because suppressed by feudalism and colonialism, the development of commercial economy was insufficient, political reformation was incomplete, and thoughts and culture were tremendously limited. These deficiencies hindered the modernization of marriage law.From part two to part five, combining cases from the district court of Chengdu in Sichuan, the paper comprehensively analyses the evolution of engagement system, system of getting married, divorce system and concubinage system. Text content of marriage law as well as the value orientation and the act of implementation in lawsuit and judicial adjudication at the grass-roots level are introduced. The great progress obtained by the law reformation is fully affirmed while the reservation of some old systems is also pointed out. The last part makes an introspection of the reformation of marriage law in the period of Nanjing National Government, summarizing its progressiveness as well as backwardness. It's a great achievement that such principles like marital autonomy, sexual equality and social priority were proposed in the law. Additionally, the factors resulting in modern transformation of marriage law are discussed in this part.