关于清代听讼制度所见“自相矛盾”现象的理解——对黄宗智教授的“表达与实践”理论的批判

本篇论文的目的是对构成黄宗智教授的《中国的民事审判——清代的表达与实践》的三个主要要素重新进行批判性地分析。这三个主要要素分别是,清代国家的民事审判曾依据国家实定法保护当事人的权利;但是这种实践与清代国家在维护秩序所显现出来的表达不一致;中华民国以后的法制的发展是清代保护权利的实践的延伸。第1节从整体上分析了黄教授的著作和笔者观点的关系。第2节,探讨了黄教授观点的前提,即汪辉祖的'听断以法'这一措辞,指出它的意思并不是指依据实定法保护民事权利,而是指把纠纷作为刑事案件来处理并施加必要的刑罚。第3节,通过分析具有刑事性质的清代听讼是怎样解决民事利益纠纷的这一问题,揭示了当时的表达与实践的关系并不是'矛盾背离'(paradoxical disjunction)。第4节,从其他的角度分析了清代听讼所固有的结构上的难点,指出黄教授的观点是不完全的。第5节,提示了笔者对清代法秩序和近现代中国法秩序的关系的理解,对黄教授的近代主义的历史理解提出了疑问。

In this article,I examine three of the arguments that constitute the framework of Professor Philip C.C.Huang’s ambitious book,Civil Justice in China:Representation and Practice in the Qing(1996).His arguments under examination here are:(1)Qing courts in practice protected the rights of litigants through adjudication of civil disputes in accordance with state law;(2)actual practice of justice differed from the Qing State’s official representation(or state ideology)concerning the maintenance of social order;(3)development of civil law in Republican China can be seen as an extension of the"practice"of Qing China.Section 1 is an introduction.In Section 2,I examine Wang Huizu’s famous phrase,"Tingduan yifa"(adjudication needs to be carried out by law),cited by Huang as the basis of his argument.In this phrase"fa"meant punishment,not law;the phrase meant"handle the dispute as a criminal case and apply appropriate punishment,"not"protect the right of the litigants in accordance with positive law."In Section 3,I explain the internal logic by which the Qing system adjudicated civil disputes in its framework of criminal justice,and demonstrate that there was no"paradoxical disjunction"between the official representation and the practice of the Qing justice system.In Section 4,I discuss the limitations of Qing civil justice from a different viewpoint than that of Professor Huang’s.In Section 5,I discuss the relationship between the Qing and modern Chinese legal systems,and question Professor Huang’s modernist interpretation of history.