Chinese Legal History

This undergraduate colloquium introduces students to the history of law in imperial China through close reading of primary sources in translation and highlights of Anglophone scholarship. We begin with legal perspectives from the Confucian and Legalist classics and the formation of early imperial legal codes. Then we focus on how law served as a field of interaction between state and society during China's last imperial dynasty, the Qing (1644-1911). Specific topics include autocracy and political crime; evidence, review, and appeals; the regulation of gender and sexual relations; the functioning of local courts; property and contract; and the informal sphere of community regulation outside the official judicial system.