清代秋審制度の機能とその實態

Abstract

A distinction was made in the Penal Code of the Great Qing 大清律例 between immediate execution 立決 and suspended execution 監候 in the regulations on the death penalty. The deliberations that determined the disposition of criminals who had been given sentences of "suspended execution, " particularly those confined in regional jails, were known as the Autumn Assizes 秋審. This study first illuminates how the Autumn Assizes, a unique system within the Qing legal system, functioned among the various systems of the imperial government and attempts to portray the workings of the deliberations in detail. This study first notes that there were two aspects to the functioning of the Autunm Assizes. The officials of the Qing understood the system as presenting an opportunity to strike a balance between human sensibility 情, embodied in each individual case, and the law 法 of the penal code. Additionally, the system was highly compatible with traditional Chinese legal thinking, and it played a role guaranteeing that the governmental system of punishments was both based and operated on the just and reasonable procedures. In this manner, the Autumn Assizes can be understood as having played the important function of supporting the legal system of the imperial government in terms of legal judgments and judicial procedures. While introducing documents from the Board of Punishments 刑部, the central judicial organ of the state, this study also analyses the workings of its deliberations in detail. In other words, when the officials of the Board of Punishments issued their rulings in the Autumn Assizes, they first educed things from various cases that would serve as a guide for their decisions. These would then be compared in the light of one another and the seriousness of the crime weighed, leading to of the opinion of each member. This way of arriving at decisions however caused great confusion when seeking a consensus on a final ruling, particularly when there were in one case grounds for both increasing and decreasing punishment. This became a major cause of the instability that shook the decision-making of the Autumn Assizes. Nevertheless, this provided a consistent flexibility in the decisions of the Autumn Assizes, and it is thought that it functioned as an effective means of discovering the most just decision in a variety of cases.