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Reviews 93 Kathryn Bernhardt and Philip C. C. Huang, editors. Civil Law in Qing and Republican China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. 340 pp. Hardcover $45.00, isbn 0-8047-2274-9. This important book should help reduce the widespread, persistent misunderstanding ofthe role oflegal process in traditional Chinese society. The received opinion has been that the Chinese people avoided law whenever possible and that the Chinese government did not participate in a major way in the solving ofcivil issues (or, when it was involved in civil issues, that it used mediation according to widely accepted social norms). Scholars dealing with legal issues from periods (like the Han, Song, and Qing dynasties) for which there is material that reflects the actual working of the legal system have long been aware that this conventional view was far offthe mark. The use of formal courts, which ruled using codified law, was widespread in traditional China. Civil Law in Qing and Republican China will also be of major importance because it illuminates some aspects of the role of law during the critically important era between the end of the empire and the end of the Republic. The work contains eight essays by specialists in traditional and Republican law, preceded by an introduction that defines the issues and places the contributions in context. This introduction discusses past scholarship, noting especially its emphasis on Chinese criminal law and its preoccupation with codes rather than law in practice (though the authors do take note of important Chinese and Japanese studies on customary and civil law). The authors also note the woefully inadequate state of our understanding oflaw in the Republican period, a weakness that this volume begins to address. The book's substantive section opens with Professor Hugh Scogin's exploration ofmethodological and theoretical issues in legal history. Professor Scogin raises important questions regarding the appropriate framework for approaching legal history, pointing in particular to the tendency oflegal history to be the servant ofpolitical and ideological agendas. This makes comparative study potentially both fruitful and misleading. Professor Scogin highlights the danger inherent in using contemporary, value laden vocabulary. He recognizes that we cannot avoid the use ofall such vocabulary but suggests that we use terms in full awareness oftheir emotional and intellectual overtones. He is also concerned about the distortion of our perceptions© 1996 by University that occurs when we stretch Western terminology—words like tort, contract, ofHawai'i Pressproperty—to cover often analogous but clearly not identical concepts in China. He goes on to note the danger that scholars will be tempted to assume that superficial structural similarities reflect a similarity of social function. 94 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1996 After discussing the traditional view of Chinese law, he proceeds to elucidate the knotty question ofwhat we might mean when we use the word "law." He also discusses specific topics that might fruitfully be examined in any study of Chinese law—custom, contract, and legal formalism. He closes by noting the great value that studies of the Chinese case can have for scholars trying to break free from the intellectual limitation imposed by an excessive concern with the Western legal tradition. The following four essays focus on different facets of Qing civil law. Jing Junjian's chapter on Qing legislation relative to the civil economy is a good illustration ofboth the advantages and limitations of the traditional approach to legal history. His piece is based almost entirely on the analysis ofcodes (statutes and substatutes). The essay demonstrates that it is possible to use the codes, supplemented in some relatively minor ways, to illuminate practice and the historical evolution of economic law. He provides a clear and cogent analysis of some implications of these codified provisions. However, having provided us with a good elucidation of the legal side of this situation, the author notes in his conclusions the very important point that official practice was often widely at variance with the rules. He also stresses (in my opinion overstresses) the considerable continuity of Chinese law. Dr. Melissa Macauley's chapter draws on her larger study of the role ofthe litigation brokers to argue that they were a symptom of, indeed perhaps a...

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