The Application Of Juridical Precedent In Ancient China

With distinctive feature, rich content, and specific system, the Chinese traditional legal system has lasted for thousands of years.In China, juridical precedent had came into existence even in B.C 770 and had became the main form. With the published law, the Chinese judiciary stepped into the code era. And the Chinese feudal governments created various legal forms to make up for the published laws, meanwhile precedent is still effective and widely used for a long time. China has a long history, each dynasty differs from the others while still inherits juridical rules from the previous dynasties. Compared to the case laws in Anglo-American legal system, the Chinese precedent system has its distinctive character in its form. Status and application.This paper analyzed the practical application of precedents in Han and Ming dynasty which was based on methods of special cases and comparison. Related law system, books and documents, and typical cases were referred and studied during the analysis.This paper studied the feature and development of practical application of judicial precedents according to time-line, the differences and connections of the judicial precedent and the published laws when applied in practice, the similarities and differences of the ancient China and the counties of the same period. With the above methods and study, this paper analyzed the judicial precedent in different Chinese dynasties and summarized the rule of ancient Chinese judicial precedent’s development and its progressive meaning and historical limit of Chinese case law and its instructional guidance for modern Chinese judiciary.