The Laws Of The Qing Dynasty On "Entering People’s Houses Without Reasons At Night"

The clause of "Entering a house without reason at night" is one of the laws of the Qing Dynasty that is closest to the modern self-defense system,and is an important provision for the people of the Qing Dynasty to protect their personal property from being infringed by others.Xing An-Hui-Lan is one of the most representative cases of the Qing Dynasty.The study of the law of "entering a house without reason at night" based on Xing An-Hui-Lan can be closer to the real idea of the adjudicators of the Qing Dynasty,and try to restore the people’s view of the law in the context of real history.As for the rule of "entering a house at night without reason",Xue Yunsheng,a scholar of the Qing Dynasty,put forward five representative musts,that is,"it must be night,it must be without reason,it must be at home,it must be at home,it must be killed at the moment." This shows that the law has strict requirements for the time,place,defender,and timing of defense.These restrictions will inevitably lead to the insufficient protection of people’s personal property,and the relevant regulations will also emerge as the times require.The regulations mainly expand the time,place and scope of the defender of the rule of "entering a house without reason at night" : the corresponding "night" can be "day",the corresponding "home" can be "city",and the corresponding "home" can be "subject" and "neighbor".There are laws and examples,so it must involve how to apply when there are conflicts.In fact,as far as the law of "entering a house without reason at night" is concerned,there are few conflicts.For these very few cases,the court adjudicators in the Qing Dynasty mainly followed the principle of "paying equal attention to the laws and regulations,but not the laws and regulations",which is also the applicable principle of all the laws and regulations in the Qing Dynasty.In addition,we can see from the proverb "Enter a house at night,either raping or stealing" that the law of "entering a house at night without cause" includes both "theft" and "rape".This leads to a close relationship between the law and the law of "killing the traitor",which is mainly reflected in the coincidence in the applicable scene and the former as the punishment reference of the latter.From the systematic analysis of the cases of the application of the law of "entering a house without reason at night" in Xing An-Hui-Lan,it can be seen that the application of the law by the adjudicators of the Qing Dynasty has relatively distinct characteristics.What is more prominent is that the adjudicators of the Qing Dynasty have realized the judgment of whether there is a causal relationship between the behavior and the result,and from the judgment,we can feel some trade-offs made by the adjudicators due to the conflict between the right of defense and the concept of "not lightly indulging in human life".From the perspective of today’s people,compared with other provisions at that time,the Qing Dynasty’s law of "entering people’s homes at night without reason" had a rare weak theoretical reason,and it also tried to pursue the unity of reason and law in case adjudication,which undoubtedly had considerable progressiveness.However,due to its limitations and more importantly,the law can be basically covered by the western self-defense system,so it was inevitably replaced by the self-defense principle after the revision of the law in the late Qing Dynasty.But rather than being replaced,the law of "entering people without reason at night" continues to remain in the criminal law as a part of justifiable defense,playing its role in protecting people’s personal property from being infringed by others.