Social power and legal culture
Subtitle: litigation masters in late imperial China
By: Melissa Macauley.
Series: Law, society, and culture in China
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 416
Subjects: Justice, Administration of -- China -- History; Dispute resolution (Law) -- China -- History; Procedure (Law) -- China -- History
Other titles: Social power & legal culture
Description: Asserting that Litigation in Late imperial China was a form of documentary warfare, this book offers a social analysis of the men who composed legal documents for commoners and elites alike. Litigation masters - a broad category of legal facilitators ranging from professional plaintmasters to simple but literate men to whom people turned for assistance - emerge in this study as central players in many of the most scandalous cases in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century China.

These cases reveal the power of scandal to shape entire categories of law in the popular and official imaginations.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [379]-398) and index.