商品簡介
Over the course of 1901-1937, China embarked on a course of broad-based judicial reform focused on the establishment of a set of substantive and procedural laws separating criminal and civil proceedings, a multi-level court system would allow for appeals, a trained and disciplined corps of judicial officers, due process underpinned by laws and checked by a regulated legal profession, and reform of punishment and the penal system in accordance with the theories and practices in the West. Xu (history, Christopher Newport U.) explores these reforms in the context of the evolution of the Chinese state. He examines the tensions between the Chinese Ministry of Justice and other agencies in the capital, between the central government and provincial governments, between judicial officials and administrative officials at the provincial level, between provincial officials and county officials, between county government offices and party organs at the county level, and between the various officials and local people. These tensions are discussed in terms of contestation for financial resources, the reach of the state, deviation from central state policy by officials starved for resources, the impact of the extension of judicial modernity on the power of local elites, and the discourses employed by various actors in discussing reform. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
作者簡介
Xiaoqun Xu is Associate Professor of history at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. He is also the author of Chinese Professionals and the Republican State: The Rise of Professional Associations in Shanghai, 1912-1937 (2001).
