Study On The Jury System In China’s Legal Culture

The jury system is an ancient and great legal system created to solve the socialdisputes in our society. As the democratic form for citizens or the masses directlyinvolve in the judicial activities as well as the guarantee mechanism of civil rights, it isfavored by many countries. The formation, operation and state of its function of anykind of system all depend on certain factors, among which legal culture is one of themost important factors whose formation is inseparable from their political and socialbackground. The modern jury system was formed in England. Since its inception, itspreads in its own way in the world, having formed jury system in common law systemand trial system of people’s assessors in continental law system. During the period of therevising laws of late Qing Dynasty, the British jury system was transplanted into China,going through the Republican period, the new Democratic Revolution period, the initialstage of new China, the Cultural Revolution, the reform and opening-up period, and itgradually formed its localization, modernization as well as diversification. It is guidedby the specific period’s legal and cultural factors behind all those series of developmentand changes. This thesis, by analyzing the political and social background of Chinesejury system, mainly discusses the legal and cultural evolution of the jury system, tracingthe development history of Chinese jury system, at the same time, we hope to provideinnovative proposals to the future direction of our current jury system, by combiningwith the trend of diversification of the legal culture against the background of currentglobalization.This thesis consists of eight sections. Section One is the introduction, starting fromthe definition of the legal system and legal culture, demonstrating the relationshipbetween the two, thus to pave the way for the discussion of the development of the jurysystem under the evolution of the legal culture of each period. From the Second sectionto the Seventh section, with the historical development as a clue, from the period ofrevising laws of late Qing Dynasty to the new era of modern legal construction, itanalyzes the development of Chinese jury system under the auspices of legal culture ofthe different periods. The last section, combining with the trend of diversification of thelegal culture against the background of current globalization, at the same time, contraposing the current Chinese assessor system, provides constructive input for thefuture development of our jury system.