The terms applied in Autumn Assizes (as ‘gingzhen’ _??__??_.‘kejin’_??__??_) give the whole institution a very particularistic flair. Seemingly, every case will be considered with both on its own merits and for the sake of more flexible judgment than the strict rule of law could allow. In other words, Autumn Assizes appear rather to be the embodiment of the emperor's mercy than a general legal institution.
A view on Juridical Assizes during the Ming Dynasty, where the framework of Autumn Assizes had been formed, gives a completely different picture. Juridical Assizes are a place of legal interpretation. The interpretation of law seen in Ming Assizes is sometimes creative but never particularistic or in any sense non-legal. This paper tries to put light on the intrinsic rationality of material law applied in Ming Assizes.
Traditional Chinese penology can be understood as a complex system of classification of cases. Classification of cases aims at balancing gravity of crime, strict equality of punishment for comparable crimes, and finally at uniformity of judical judgement. For this purpose Chinese law developed three legal concepts unknown in western jurisprudence, namely, title of offense (zuiming _??__??_), title of punishment (xingming _??__??_) and various categories of circumstances (e. g. qingzhen _??__??_, gingyoukejin _??__??__??__??_) . In principle, every criminal act should have a precise equivalent in law, viz. a title of offense. That means every tiny fact in a hypothetical criminal act leads to a different name of offense. If no appropriate title of offense is provided in existing laws, a new one will be defined by analogy (bifu _??__??_) and eventually added to the laws called li (_??_). Because this kind of penology produces an unlimited number of titles of offense, a complex system of classification is indispensable. In the first round of classification, every legal norm which defines a title of offense attaches to it a title of punishment. Although these titles of punishment originally derived from actual penalties, they form only an ideal scale for measuring gravity of offenses. ‘Death’ (si _??_) doesn't mean capital punishment, and a sentence to banishment not necessarily results in exile. Real punishment is decided according to the categories of circumstances. Therefore the huge number of titles of offense are classified into comprehensible groups of comparable circumstances. Assizes are the place where appropriateness of existing offense title is examined and new offense titles are defined and classified. In other words assizes mean creative interpretation of law or a kind of juridical legislation.
This paper elucidates the complex system of classification by analyzing the categories of circumstances found in records of shilu (_??__??_) concerning assizes throughout the Ming dynasty. Thereby a new way of understanding Autumn Assizes in a more rational sense is proposed.
