The Research Of Metabolism Of Judicial Inspection Personnel During The Nanjing National Government Period (1929-1945)

This article takes the reform to the judicial inspection personnel of Nanjing government between 1929 and 1945 as the center, through studying the measure from central and local government for improving judicial examination during that period, to pry into the complex development of modern judicial inspection personnel on the transition path.A judicial inspector refers to a person who is responsible for the field investigation of all kinds of crime scenes, objects, bodies in the trail processes. In the west, the judicial inspection personnel mainly indicates to the legal medical expert; in China, it refers to the post—mortem examiner. In late Qing Dynasty, judicial inspector replaced the status of the post—mortem examiner , in charge of the judicial inspection, but the inspection methods still followed the previous way of the post—mortem examiner.With the development of the society, part of people queried the traditional inspection on account of injustices based on unclear inspections. Further, since the withdrawal of judicial sovereignty in modern times was required, professional legal medical experts on modern science had started to substitute old inspectors.Between 1929 and 1935, the central and local governments have been committed to the development of modern forensic medicine experts to replace the old ones. To do this,the Ministry of Justice has set up the Institute of Forensic Medicine, taking the responsibility of examining cases among the whole country and training forensic personnel.Moreover, the Institute of forensic medicine launched the first forensic researcher class in 1933, and developed the first batch of legal physicians based on the forensic medicine knowledge system of western countries. Those 17 legal physicians were sent to the local court for working after graduated in 1934. In addition, central government issued a set of wage standards in this period in order to enhance their social status, and retain the hard—won legal medical experts. Differing from the measures of central government, many local courts directed the eyes upon it, because of various limiting factors, such as the high salary level, not easy to make, the traditional discrimination. As a result, lots of local courts continued to use the traditional inspectors. Therefore, the measures of popularizing inspectors from central government encountered the obstacles.On the one hand, the justice needs accurate test results in urgent; on the other hand,the local courts could not recruit professional medical examiners due to various factors.Reluctantly, the central had no choice but to change the strategy, which decentralized to doctors’ hands and trained judicial inspectors with the modern forensic science knowledge.Between 1936 and 1945, the focus has shifted from training of forensic examiners to training old inspectors on basis of modern forensic expertise. By the influence of the war of resistance against Japan, the central authorities were unable to cultivate the inspector,so that the local courts set up their own classes. From the inspector class settled by Hubei provincial court office, this class had some features, like the shorter training time, fitting the new knowledge with old, the lower education background and so on. However, these students could only alleviate the situation of extreme shortage of inspection personnel at that time, but the inspection level did not reach the expected goal as the expectation.Therefore, although central government promulgated the employment rules of inspectors,and improved the salary and social status, but these inspectors still could not enjoy this sort of treatment provided by the state, due to the lower inspection level. Hence, the national law seemed to be "a mere scrap of paper".During the period of Nanjing National government, the transformation process of judicial inspectors was actually the adjusting process of between the central and local,ideal and reality. From the cultivation of forensic to the inspectors, this change of the goal essentially reflected some issues that included the lack of judicial funding, the restriction of traditional concepts and so on. The absence of an overall plan and only unilateral change of talent were bound to make the problem more complicated, and the transformation of judicial officers will not succeed.