On the Litigation in the Chunqiu Period

Abstract

In the Chunqiu period a litigation was called yu _??_ or song _??_ as in later ages. Their definition in later ages is that "a larger suit is called yu and a smaller one song." But in the Chunqiu period they, yu and song, meant two different stages of one procedure of a suit; yu was a dispute and verbal conflicts in the court between the parties, and to sit face to face for the occasion was called zuoyu _??__??_ and to pass a judgement on the dispute duanyu _??__??_ or zheyu _??__??_ ; song itself was. a procedure to originate a suit and it is found in historical materials written in a form such as "X (the plaintiff) brings Y (the accused) and appeals to Z (the judge)." This definite pattern shows the fact that there was a general practice that the plaintiff had the accused accom-panied in bringing a suit in the Chunqiu period.
The judging standard of duanyu was the justifiability of the parties' arguments. This justifiability was called zhi _??_ and the illegal practice of buying off the judge was called maizhi _??__??_ or to buy zhi. At the period there were no fulltime judges and those who were influential and celebrated filled the role of the judges at request. The parties litigant were often represented by advocates.
It may be proper to call the litigation in the Chunqiu period with these characteristics the "agonistic lawsuit." And it was closely related with the law structure peculiar to the period where the self-help was generally accepted; the "agonistic lawsuit" and the self-help of the Chunqiu period were both derived from the constitution of the period, that is, the distributed army forces which were each possessed by respective shi _??_ in the form of shi _??_. The cause, then, of the disap-pearance of the "agonistic lawsuit" in the time of the Imperial China may be found in the disorganization of the constitution. The highly bureaucratic litigation system of the Imperial China was a historical product born and formed with the disorganization of the constitution.