陈纲案与明前期对赃官的惩治

The Case of Chen Gang and the Legal Sanction against Corrupted Officials in Early Ming

成化年间河南南阳府舞阳县的陈纲案,经按察司、巡按御史、都察院、刑部审理,历经四年最后由皇帝定案,为审视明前期对赃官的惩治提供了重要的线索。明前期的司法,是在洪武祖制的格局中对祖制进行有效调整的过程,其成果在弘治十三年《问刑条例》中得到确定。陈纲案是这一过程的具体展示。陈纲案中,“还职”“为民”“冠带闲住”等不同发落方式的提出,体现出明前期在惩治赃官时对祖制的坚持与反思、对《大明律》与条例关系的理解与利用以及对司法公正与“为贪墨者之戒”之间不同目标的调和。

The Case of Chen Gang,which occurred during the reign of Emperor Chenghua(1465-1487),in Wuyang county,Nanyang prefecture,Henan province,lasted four years.It was heard,re-tried,reviewed,and deliberated by the provincial surveillance commissioner,the regional inspector,and officials from the Censorate and the Ministry of Justice.It was finally concluded based on the decision of Emperor Chenghua.The case provides a unique venue to investigate how the crime of corruption and corrupted officials were defined and how discourses of justice,morality,and effective sanctions were intermingled.The Chenghua reign witnessed the ambivalent attitude toward the ancestral institutions designed and enforced by the first Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang.Legal thoughts,law,and legal practices were restricted by the ancestral institutional framework on the one hand but demonstrated the efforts of making modification and innovation on the other.The Itemized Regulations for Trying Penal Matters that was issued in the thirteenth year of the Hongzhi reign(1488-1505)was a partial outcome of those efforts.The case of Chen Gang illustrates this significant legal process with details.