Research On Local Legal Decentralization System Of The Song Dynasty

At the beginning of the Song dynasty, in order to avoid division of the country and localseparate regime politics, TaiZu ZhaoKuangYin followed ZhaoPu’s advices, and graduallyweakened the feudal separatist forces, to strengthen the centralization of power.At the sametime, by adding official positions, the ruler divided courtiers’ power, to prevent courtiersgrabbing all of the power. In the context of the administrative decentralization, local legaldecentralization system of the Song dynasty was established.The Song dynasty set up County, State, Road three-level judicial branches. By contrast,the county judicial organization was simpler, and the characteristic of decentralization was notvery obvious. However a very fine tradition existed in judicial procedure. Xianwei who wasresponsible for catching theft may not interrogate, and thus separated investigation from trial.The State judicial institutions setting of the Song dynasty was completely reflected the featureof decentralization. On one hand, different independent departments were responsible forinterrogating, checking and applying the law; On the other hand, Tongpan divided andrestricted the judicial power of the magistrate of the State. In Road judicial branch, the Songdynasty set up four independent departments, which owned judicial authority jointly.On the basis of dividing courtiers’ power, the Song dynasty established somecorresponding decentralized systems. One of these systems named JuYanFenSi was widelyacclaimed. It embodied the spirit of separating interrogating from applying the law. The Songrulers and literary intelligentsias spared no effort to follow this spirit. The song dynastyinherited checking system from previous dynasty, and spread it to the judicial institutions atvarious levels. Officials should abide by the principle of withdrawal to keep independent. Toavoid abuse of judicial powers, a system named FanYiBieKan was established, whichprovided a broader relief channel for the parties. However this system led to a problem thatcases might not be settled in time.The local legal decentralization system of the song dynasty reflected the Confucianismidea "cautious punishment". It was promoted by intelligentsias. Honestly speaking, thisjudicial decentralization is different from the modern sense that the detection power, theprocuratorial power, the judicial power should be independent from each other. In essence, itonly divided judicial powers to different departments, and never broke the inquisitorial-litigation model of ancient China. The establishment of the judicialdecentralization system, played an important part in strengthening centralization and avoidingabuse of judicial power. However, as a result of this immensely and carefully designedprogram, cases might not be settled in time.