[ { "id": 209466, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 123, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "101\n\nlawyers two months training in \"New Democracy\" and placing them under Communist cadres.\n\nWhen the People's Political Consultative Conference, organized by the victorious Chinese Communist Party, issued its \"Common Programme\" formally establishing the People's Republic in September 1949, it also adopted an Organic Law of the Central People's Government, Article 5 of this document provided for a Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate, but no action was taken on the establishment of a system of lower courts until September 1951. In fact, during this period, civil and criminal courts left over from the Kuomintang period continued to function alongside military, revolutionary, and people's tribunals. Article 17 of the Common Programme had done away with the six codes of the Kuomintang, but new laws were published in rapid order, some 3,452 of them by September of 1954, including major laws dealing with land reform, marriage, the punishment of counter-revolutionaries and corruption. However, no systematic codes were issued and there were many gaps in areas which lawmakers in most societies would consider of prime importance, including such crimes as homicide. When appropriate laws and regulations were lacking, judges were supposed to use the general policies of Mao's \"New Democracy.\" Such ambiguity naturally led to great inconsistency in judgments, and judges were forced to make wide use of analogy even to the point of secretly basing their decisions on Kuomintang legal precedent.\n\nIn the autumn of 1952 a National Judicial Conference was called to launch a reform of the courts. By the time the movement came to an end in April 1953, many former Kuomintang officials had been removed from the judicial system, but the problem of judicial decision making continued to persist. A Chinese Political Science and Law Association was established in the spring of 1953 which in May of the following year began publishing its national legal journal, Zhengfa yanjiu [Researches in Political Science and Law]. At the same time, a special legal publishing house was established and began producing annual collections of laws. Several law schools or institutes for training judicial cadres were also opened. Finally a second National\n\n--", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209468, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 125, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "103\n\nby law,\" and \"the accused shall have the right to defense.” This latter provision formed the basis for the establishment of legal advisory offices attached to courts and staffed by people's lawyers, who in addition to performing all sorts of advisory and mediative work, were also empowered to defend both civil and criminal defendants, including counter-revolutionaries, in court.\n\nWhat followed during the next three years until the late spring of 1957 seemed very promising at the time. Work was begun on a series of codes, legal education was greatly expanded, law journals began to appear which by late 1955 were discussing a wide range of topics with increasing frankness. For example, in 1955, the majority of the articles published in the most important of these journals, Zhengfa yanjiu, were of a simple informative or propaganda nature. The remainder were divided between articles on Soviet law, which were important in providing acceptable precedents supporting reform, and articles dealing with practical problems such as how to prepare documents, the meaning of legal terms, investigative procedures, and questions involving the marriage law and inheritance. While none of these articles were particularly controversial in nature, they did indicate a move toward professionalism. By 1956 and through the first half of 1957, however, many articles began dealing with such highly sensitive issues as what constitutes evidence, particularly the place of confessions, the proper attitude of the court toward the defendant (one writer even called for presumption of innocence), the use of analogy, the need for Party and state organizations and functionaries to obey the law, and various problems of procedure.\n\nIn spite of the increasing demand for professionalism in judicial work and liberalization of the legal system, none of these articles faced up to the basic problem of Party control over the courts. This had to await the revitalized \"Hundred Flowers Movement\" in the late spring of 1957. Following Mao's February speech, \"On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People,\" the Party Central Committee urged non-Communists to voice their criticisms of Party work in order to assist the Committee in eradicating the three evils of bureaucratism, subjectivism, and sectarianism. In late May the Chinese Political Science and Law Association organized a series of forums for the stated purpose of giving the judicial circles in Beijing an opportunity", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209469, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "104\n\nW. ALLYN RICKETT\n\nof presenting their opinions to the Party. The opportunity was too much for judicial workers to pass up, and the speeches which followed were often extremely vitriolic. Almost every aspect of existing judicial practice came under attack, particularly the role played by the Party. The editor of the Association's journal, Zhengfa yanjiu, demanded that high Communist cadres “get down out of their sedan chairs\". Some of the more important demands presented, as reported by the New China News Agency on May 29, 1957, included: 1) reform of law schools and the broadening of legal education to include such subjects as international law, which had been neglected under the Communists; 2) relaxation of the dictatorship and stress on the protection of democratic privileges; 3) immediate codification of the laws which were said in many fields to be entirely lacking or so vague they could not be used as a basis for sound legal judgments; 4) elimination of mass movements which usurped the function of the courts; 5) assertion of judicial independence and elimination of Party interference in judicial matters. What was even more surprising was that among the strongest critics were members of the Party, including Jia Qian, chief judge of one of the two criminal divisions of the Supreme Court. In spite of the highly emotional language used in expressing these demands, there was little questioning of the basic leadership role of the Party in society at large. Yet, when the counterattack came in the context of the well-known Anti-Rightist Movement two weeks later, it soon became clear that the Party was going to interpret these demands in that light. Extensive purges followed. Many leading judicial figures were declared “rightists” and relieved of their posts and some were sent to the countryside for reform through labour.\n\nThe attack on the \"rightists\" continued throughout the rest of the year and on into the spring of 1958. The arguments that filled the law journals during these months indicated a complete reversal of the former trend toward an independent judicial system and its attendant professionalism. The anti-rightist arguments of this period are well represented in a January 19, 1958 radio speech of Wu Defeng, Vice-President of the Chinese Political Science and Law Association. Wu presented a series of statements which he claimed represented the views of the \"rightists\" along with his replies:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 } ]