A Study Of Dynasty Family Law

Family is the cell of society, and clan is an important bond to contact family. The primary task of the harmony of society is to realize the harmony of family and the concord of clan. It is said by Mencius that: "family is the root of country". The clans of various sizes are the foundation of the country and the basic cell of the society. The prosperity of the clans influences the governance effects of the country directly. The political system of ancient China was highly centralized, the emperor authorized quasi-legislative power and quasi- jurisdiction to householder or patriarch to carry out limited autonomy in the clan, and the life of the clan member was intervened and controlled by the patriarch. The private laws which maintained the clan authority were called by a joint name "family discipline and clan regulation". Today, with the increasing opening degree of the society, the scope of people's communication is becoming larger and the fluidity of people is increasing obviously. Under this circumstance, the influence of the clan is decreasing in some degree than that of feudal society. But in the nowadays society, the clan is still having far-reaching influence. For most ordinary people, the nearest and the most influential criterion of behavior is not others but family discipline and clan regulation, and clan is the only social organization that they can cling to and rely on.The period of Northern Dynasty is the era of vigorous development of clan law. In the Chinese legal history, the clan law of Northern Dynasty carried on the remnant character of preceding times and initiated the new vogue of following Tang dynasty. Its content and form tended to maturity, and most of the laws were supported by the court. It can enlighten us reflect the Chinese traditional legal culture with scientific & realistic attitude to summarize the experience and lesson of the clan law of Northern Dynasty , then extract its essence and eliminate its dregs, it can also promote the legal construction of our socialistic harmonious society. The research object of this article is the weakness and difficulty in the study area of the history of Chinese legal system ----the clan law of the Northern dynasty. The stress of this article is not the restatement of traditional system of the clan law and especially patriarchal clan system as a part of the former, but to set forth the more distant historical trace of the clan law from the angle of the contrasts among different clan laws, and to set forth its way to evolve and survive during the course of mutual generation and restriction with the national law.This article first has carried on careful combing to family's method history, successively divides into four kind of different manifestations: the father patriarchal system of the last stage of the primitive society, the patriarchal clan system in Yin and Zhou dynasty, the old and well-known family from Qin and Han Dynasty to Tang Dynasty and the feudal family after Song Dynasty Next, has been clear about family's method connotation, and has limited the Northern Dynasty family's method content, the characteristic and the function in this foundation. Afterwards, dialectical analysis ,we can educe the relationship between family discipline and clan regulation and the national law: as one dimension of the dualistic law in the feudal society, from the different point of view, the national law and family discipline and clan regulation stabilize the feudal relations, maintain the feudal order, and constitute the integrated feudal jurisprudence together. Finally from the fusion national culture, the well distributed social stratum benefit and the legal culture rich angle profoundly elaborated family's method value as well as to the contemporary enlightenment.This article probes the clan law not only from its form, furthermore from its essence and nature, both pays attention to the succession to Northern Dynasty's clan law, and adverts to the restriction of the Northern Dynasty's society, politics, economy, culture to the clan law. Thus we can accurately grasp the content, evolution, nature and historical status of the clan law of Northern Dynasty wholly and deeperly. As for the study method, the macroscopic and microscopic, the deduction and demonstration are integrated closely, both makes the historical inspection from the depth aspect, and makes the comparative exploration from the landscape orientation.