Tony Dahao Qian

Abstract Literary judgments ( pan 判) were highly stylized prose pieces from the Tang dynasty written in response to legal and administrative controversies. The ability to compose judgments was the principal criterion by which candidates were selected for offices in the Tang bureaucracy. In this article, judgments written for cases that involved disputes between (prospective) spouses and their families are examined, with a focus on the use of extralegal considerations to resolve sensitive domesti

This article examines the recurrent narratives, tropes, and motifs that were utilized in the disposition of marriage controversies in the late Ming case collection, New Accounts of Case Decisions (Zheyu xinyu), attributed to the prefectural judge Li Qing (1602<en>1683). The collection consists of 210 judgments divided into ten categories and begins conspicuously with marriage cases. This article emphasizes how Li Qing tells the story of each case by using references to classical, historical, and

Abstract This article examines cases involving suspicious deaths of women and allegations of female suicide in inquest records from the last decades of the Chosŏn period (1392–1910). Discourses on female suicide in the late Chosŏn traditionally revolved around the chastity ideology and several exemplary scenarios: suicide by widows to follow their husbands in death, by victims of sexual assault, and in response to accusations of sexual impropriety. While scholars have shown that the realities of

This article examines how royal mercy is articulated in homicide cases involving the family in the Records of Adjudications (Simnirok), a collection of over one thousand capital offenses reviewed by King Chŏngjo (r. 1776–1800) of Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910). Simni (“adjudications”) review comprised case memorials by provincial and metropolitan authorities and the royal judgments written in response to them. It was the king’s prerogative to endorse or commute any death sentence issued by officials b

In the Roman Empire and the Chinese Tang dynasty, two societies with sophisticated laws, students were trained to argue cases through rhetorical exercises that paid little attention to formal legal sources (statutes, regulations, case precedents, etc.). This dissertation examines how these exercises shaped, and were themselves shaped by, Roman and Tang legal culture. Controversiae were legal speeches performed before fictitious judges as a Roman schoolroom exercise, and literary judgments (pan 判

Abstract From 1384 until 1757, the civil service examinations at the provincial and metropolitan levels included a test on “judicial statements” ( panyu 判語)—hypothetical legal decisions written in response to five statutory titles selected mainly from the penal code. These decisions were composed in parallel prose of predominantly four- and six-character lines, and consisted of moral exhortations and historical allusions with little regard for the formal law. This article focuses on the panyu ,

Tang literary judgments were essays written in the persona of an official resolving legal and administrative questions. They were an essential component of the civil service selection examination, whereby candidates holding nominal official status were appointed to actual posts in the bureaucracy. Zhang Zhuo’s Longjin fengsui pan (Dragon Sinews, Phoenix Marrow Judgments) is the earliest surviving collection of model judgment answers meant to aid candidates in preparing for the selection examinat

Abstract: Tang literary judgments were essays written in the persona of an official resolving legal and administrative questions. They were an essential component of the civil service selection examination, whereby candidates holding nominal official status were appointed to actual posts in the bureaucracy. Zhang Zhuo’s Longjin fengsui pan (Dragon Sinews, Phoenix Marrow Judgments) is the earliest surviving collection of model judgment answers meant to aid candidates in preparing for the selectio

Lin Shu and Wang Shouchang's Bali chahua nü yishi (1899), a translation of La dame aux camélias (1848) by Alexandre Dumas fils, has usually been read with an eye to the idealized figure of the noble courtesan in the Chinese literary tradition. The resemblance of the lady of the camellias to that figure has served to explain both her popular appeal to late Qing readers and her transformation into a Chinese literary and cultural icon. Her iconic status, however, has overshadowed the complex ways i

This article examines popular narratives about juvenile offenders—their psychology, propensities, and reformation—in the context of legal popularization ( pufa 普法) in the early reform era. With the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), the Chinese Communist Party mobilized a series of anti-crime campaigns to combat high crime rates especially among youth—but with only short-term success. In 1985, the party officially circulated a five-year plan to disseminate “common legal knowledge,” whic