Understanding of Criminal Reconciliation in Ancient China

Abstract

It is the duty of literature on criminal law to record the states orthodox criminal legislation and justice. However, it is difficult to find a systematic and sufficient historical literature for directly expounding the criminal reconciliation outside the state criminal litigation system. This is a civil act among people or a non-statutory criminal reconciliation. Meanwhile, the object of historiography of modern criminal law is usually limited to the evolution and development of the state criminal law and official criminal justice. Thus researchers focus on these areas leaving little systematic evidence for scattered, local, individual, non-statutory and non-normalized criminal reconciliations between victims and offenders. However, upon investigation of the long standing institutional change of Chinese society as well as an analysis of the social reality reflected by Chinese traditional social and legal cultures, it can be confirmed that criminal reconciliation in ancient Chinese society existed reasonably and necessarily.

Keywords

criminal reconciliation / countryside autonomy / integrated adminis-tration and judicature / traditional culture