What Is “Chinese Legal” Culture?

As its title indicates, this book deals with how religious values and practices have affected the development of legal culture in Chinese history, especially in presentday China. Relying on document analysis and fieldwork research, the author develops the concept of “judicial continuum” to “stress the reverberation between different forms of Chinese legal culture, including private mediation, the courts, and rituals like oaths and underworld indictments” (p. xi). His central focus is “what the ideology of justice and judicial rituals reveal about the larger context of Chinese legal culture” (p. 5). He provides a positive response: religious beliefs and practices have been an integral part of Chinese legal culture in the pursuit of justice (p. 179).

The book consists of eight chapters, as well as the introduction and conclusion. After laying out major issues in the introduction, including research questions, conceptual framework, previous scholarship, and methodology, chapter 1 traces the development of the Chinese ideology of justice up to the ninth century. By comparing and contrasting the history of the underworld in China and the West, it emphasizes the legalistic feature in Chinese religion: “Chinese conceptions of the underworld feature chthonic deities who serve as officials in the afterlife while also functioning like earthly bureaucrats in using legal procedures to judge the deceased” (p. 27). This feature can be seen in early China’s philosophical works, imperial policies, and Taoism, which were enriched and strengthened by the spread of Buddhism.

Chapter 2 discusses the key concept of the book—the Chinese judicial continuum—from the Ming dynasty to the Republican era (1368–1644). By judicial continuum, the author means “a coherent cultural system consisting of mediation, formal legal procedures, and rituals like the making of an oath” (p. 47). In resolving disputes, these three methods can be either used individually or performed concurrently, which indicates the wholeness of law/religion and this world/the underworld in Chinese culture.

Chapters 3 through 5 elaborate on various judicial rituals, mostly in imperial China. Chapter 3 narrates oath-making rituals together with chicken-beheading rituals. It specifies oath-making rituals into oaths of allegiance/loyalty, oaths/vows of commitment, and oaths of innocence, all of which were often accompanied by chicken-beheading rituals. In contrast with Western law, “such rites never became part of formal legal procedures, including those of either traditional yamens or modern courts” (p. 80).

Chapter 4 deals with indictment rituals, including indictments filed against other members of the living, countersuits to indictments by the dead or animal spirits, and indictments filed against illegitimate haunting spirits. It also touches some gender issues.

Chapter 5 describes the two rituals of trials of the insane and dressing as a criminal. In these rituals, participants communicate with underworld deities to admit guilt, request atonement, and so forth. Compared to “formal legal procedures,” these rituals “better suit the framework of the Chinese ideology of justice” (p. 115).

The final three chapters of the book turn the focus toward the judicial rituals in the modern era, either outside China or in Taiwan. Chapter 6 looks at how the Chinese judicial rituals are dealt with in other Asian countries and Western countries such as Australia and the United States. It points out that even Western authorities tolerate Chinese judicial rituals, which demonstrates a tension and interaction between modern nation-states and religious traditions.

Chapter 7 specifically traces the evolution of the judicial rituals in Taiwan from the colonial era to modern times. It observes that although the performance of judicial rituals experienced a considerable decline as a result of contemporary conditions such as pressure from rights groups, the rituals are still popular among various groups of people, including politicians, gang members, and prostitutes. They are used widely for family and financial disputes.

The last chapter, chapter 8, is primarily a case study of judicial rituals based on the author’s fieldwork at the Dizang Abbey in Taiwan. By examining three types of religious documents collected in the abbey...