On The Legal Awareness Of The Differences

Legal consciousness is the peculiar kind of social consciousness, is in the dynamic process of development. It is very complicated and important for us to study the status of legal consciousness, especially in the instantly transforming society in China. Since the evolution of legal consciousness is mainly decided by different factors of society such as benefit, thoughts and opinions, accomplishment of knowledge and social mentality. Therefore, those diversity by "position" lead that different people of society have different cognition and understanding of law in our country, and form the different status of legal consciousness. The book talks about the Xuting case, happening in Guangzhou recently and initiating the hot discussion in the whole country, and tries to analysize the current situation of legal consciousness and the important causes.Xuting case is a specimen of significance by law. Working in Guangzhou city, young Xuting arrived at some ATM of the Guangzhou Commercial Bank on April 21, 2006, and fetched his money .Because the machine appeared some mistakes on system promotion, Xuting successively left Guangzhou with 175,000yuan. After the event, his colleague Guo Anshan who fetched 18,000yuan was arrested. Xuting was arrested at Baoji railway station in Shanxi Province on May 22, 2007 and brought to justice. And his colleague Guo Anshan was given oneself up to the government and sentenced to one year, 1000yuan of penalty. And the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court made first decision on December 16, 2007, hold that Xuting's behavior was convicted crime of burglary. Xuting was given life imprisonment, deprived of political rights for life, and confiscated all property of individual. The accused Xuting lodged an appeal on January 16, 2008, Guangdong Higher People's Court gave reexamining, the Intermediate People's Court made another decision on March 31, 2008. The Court still hold that Xuting was convicted crime of burglary, but a 5 years' fixed-term imprisonment, and fined 20,000yuan.From life imprisonment to five years' fixed-term imprisonment, in the four months, news media had given forceful attention. The case initiated broad discussion and public dispute and was judged by relevant law experts "top-ten effects of 2007 year". Discussing Xuting's behavior greatly aroused the whole people, because Xuting's behavior was questioned in crime with guilty or not guilty, guilty and application, and finding of some complicated facts and legal problems such as law fairness, judicial fairness. This discussion included the Procuratorate, the Bank, the accused Xuting and his defense attorney, Xuting's father, the Court, legal scholars, the lawyer community and cyber-citizens and so on. The book described general public's discussion and disputes, with regard to displaying different views ,opinions and cognitions of the case and law ,and analysizing the causes of those differences.The book is composed of three parts. In Partâ… , there is a brief introduction to the Xuting case and it's disputable points whether Xuting's behavior fetching money by making use of ATM machine to exceed the quota is guilty or not, whether ATM belongs to an institution of the bank or not, whether the application of penalty is reasonable or not. The Part II makes a classification and description of the public discussion of the case respectively, such as the Procuratorate, the Bank , the accused Xuting and his defense attoney, Xuting's father , the Court involved, legal experts and scholars , the lawyer community, cyber-citizen and so on. In Part III, an important analysis is made about legal principles from the discussion and classification of the case in law and sociology, and a conclusion is made that the causes of those difference are benefit, career, accomplishment of law knowledge and moral emotion.The book thinks that legal consciousness is a kind of cognition and understanding of principles of law about what law is and how the law to operate in the realistic society ,its involved problem is how people to understand the relationships of law and society, and how to boost improvement of law.The book adopts the methods of legal sociology and sociology of knowledge, takes the disputes in the case to describe and analysize the social structure of legal consciousness, make an explanation of the differences of legal consciousness. Besides, the book applies other methods such as semantic analysis, statistic analysis and legal interpretation to analysis of the case and relevant problems, to look forward to strengthening the stringency of conclusion and scientificalness of studying process.