Legal History

By  Chen Huilin   2005/3/20

The science of legal history is a basic subject of jurisprudence. Legal history is mainly studying the process and regular of emerging and development of law in history of humanity. In general legal history is divided to two fields: the history of legal system and the history of legal thought. In China each of them separately is divided to two parts: Chinese legal history and Foreign legal history.

I mainly teach the history of Chinese legal thought and the history of Western  legal thought, and investige their characteristics by comparing a difference in legal system such as constitution, civil law and criminal law.

Below I will simple introduce the two most famous law schools in history.

1, Chinese Legalists（中国法家）. Chinest Legalist was a school of thought in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods（春秋战国时期）,770-221BC. For the Legalists, human nature was essentially evil, and only a legal system of rewards and punishments could ensure the survival of the states. So, they put forward with ruling country by law. However, they thought that law could only be established by emperor. The most famous representative figure of the Legalists were Shang Yang and Han Feizi.

2, Roman jurisprudence(Roman legal science). Roman jurisprudence Producing was along with Roman law forming. Roman Law is the common foundation upon which the European legal order is built. Roman jurists for the first time clearly suggest that law is the system about right, adjudication is the art about fairness. They were the first people to make law into a science. During the first two centuries Roman jurisprudence was the most fertile. The most famous Roman jurists were Gaius（盖尤斯），Paulus（保罗）, Ulpianus（乌尔比安），Papinions（伯比尼安），Modeslinus（莫德斯蒂努斯）.

（Note: This is a speech outline of mine for Doctor's course " English for International Academic Conferences " .）