Thinking With Models: The Construction of Legal Cases as Reflected in Late Qing Local Archives

Abstract

In current scholarship, late imperial China’s criminal justice is mainly studied through judicial documents reviewed by the central administration, first and foremost the xingke tiben 刑科題本, or copies of routine memorials made by the censorial section of the Board of Punishments, as well as memorandum (shuotie 說帖) recorded in collections of cases. In this article, by contrast, I analyze a sample of more than forty dossiers on criminal cases constituted at the county level, for which the final judgment approved by the central administration is known. The reconstitution of the whole adjudication process shows that local magistrates often adapted the facts to fit the extant legal categories and commonly relied on model cases to craft their decisions. This pattern of administration of justice did not necessarily entail a miscarriage of justice and has its origin in a form of legal reasoning framed by the bureaucratic organization of late imperial Chinese justice.