Abstract
It is the duty of literature on criminal law to record the states orthodox criminal legislation and justice. However, it is difficult to find a systematic and sufficient historical literature for directly expounding the criminal reconciliation outside the state criminal litigation system. This is a civil act among people or a non-statutory criminal reconciliation. Meanwhile, the object of historiography of modern criminal law is usually limited to the evolution and development of the state criminal law and official criminal justice. Thus researchers focus on these areas leaving little systematic evidence for scattered, local, individual, non-statutory and non-normalized criminal reconciliations between victims and offenders. However, upon investigation of the long standing institutional change of Chinese society as well as an analysis of the social reality reflected by Chinese traditional social and legal cultures, it can be confirmed that criminal reconciliation in ancient Chinese society existed reasonably and necessarily.
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Translated from Zhengfa Luntan 政法论坛 (Tribune of Political Science and Law), 2008, 26(3): 39–48
Ms. Xiaofeng Wu, Ph.D of law, was an associate professor whose research focuses on criminal procedure law. Her published books include 金融犯罪的认定与处罚 (Conviction and Punishment for Financial Crimes), 刑事责任专题整理研究 (Summary of the Research on Criminal Responsibility in China), 冲突与对接—刑事和解刑法制度研究 (Research on Criminal Reconciliation Systematization in China). Moreover, she has over 20 articles published, including 中国黑社会性质犯罪 (Analysis of Chinese Gang Crimes), 中国刑法中的无限防卫权 (On the Right to Defend without Restriction in China’s Criminal Law), 在边缘处漫漫思考死刑 (Widely Thinking about the Death Penalty), etc.
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Wu, X. Understanding of criminal reconciliation in ancient China. Front. Law China 5, 91–114 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11463-010-0005-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11463-010-0005-4