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The Judge and the Sacred: Notes for a Comparative History of Western and Chinese Judicial Cultures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2014

Robert Jacob
Robert Jacob*
Affiliation:
Directeur de Recherche du C.N.R.S. (France)
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Abstract

The present paper reviews some conclusions deriving from a series of works by a historian of medieval Western law and justice who has applied comparative analysis to the Chinese world. It points to the distance between the two civilizations, in terms of the concept of a “debt of justice” owed by the state, the autonomy of the judicial power, and judicial ethics. It opens a debate on the cultural elements that define the judicial truth-making process in various legal systems.

Keywords

debt of justiceethics of judgesjudicial truthrituals of procedures
Type
Comparative and Empirical Approaches of Socio–Legal Research on Asia
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , May 2014 , pp. 17 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 

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Footnotes

*

Translated from French by Charlotte Braillon, teaching and research Assistant at the University of Liège, and Anne-Françoise Debruche, Professor at the University of Ottawa.

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