Family Concept And Traditional Chinese Legal System, The History Of Interaction And Its Modern Value

Every system is the exteriorization of the ideas. In the long history, the sense of family, exclusive to the Chinese people, was not only recognized and praised highly by the Confucianism, but also gradually developed into the ethical law and domestic discipline and clan rule and formed Chinese Legal System which was different with the rest of the world. The sense of family played a great role in history, which interacted positively with the national legislation. But since the late Qing Dynasty's political reform and legal system reform, the sense of the family had gradually been questioned, denied and regarded as the obstacle to modernization of the law system.This paper thinks that the sense of the family has been able to influence China for thousands of years and absorbed by the successive dynasties' laws because it had its reasonable value. Although some views of it are not consistent with the value--pursuit of modern society, we should not simply deny it wholly. The really scientific approach is to go on researching the sense of the family to find those who still have thoughts with the modern value, and make them modernized to service the modern law system. This paper is divided into four chapters.The first chapter of the paper defines the concept of family and sense of family, and narrates the Emergence and Development of the sense of family's historical process in detail in accordance with the historical order. From the development process of the sense of family, we can see that the sense of family is compatible with the development of the ancient social. This sense had a great effect on the ancient country's system model-- the unity of family and country.In the second chapter, the paper proves the sense of family's profound impact on the ancient legislation through a large number of instances. This paper thinks that the ethics law and the family laws are two external forms of the sense of family, and carefully studied the emergence, development and manifestation of the ethics law and family laws. Through the argumentations, it can be clearly found, either for national law, or for civil law, the sense of family is an integral part of the determining factor.The third chapter focuses on the impact of national law on the sense of family. Through the analysis, this paper divides the impacts into two entirely different ways. And the late Qing's political reform and legal system reform is the watershed of different impacts. Before and after, the sense of family faced two different fates.The final chapter affirms some positive values of the sense of family on the basis of the three chapters above, and suits the remedy to the case aiming at the problems and shortcomings of the modern legal system, emphasizing the modern law should be established in the reality of the Chinese traditional culture and strengthen the regulation and protection of the family ethics to promote the perfection of the laws and harmony of the society.