The Role of Emotional Reasoning in Traditional Chinese Justice

The role of emotional reasoning in traditional Chinese justice is as follows:

Emotional reasoning has a rich soil of existence in ancient Chinese justice, and has long dominated ancient legal thought and principles of adjudication. Due to the influence of traditional legal culture, the contemporary people still value emotional reasoning to a large extent, and emotional reasoning is still subconsciously playing a role in influencing the process and results of judicial adjudication, so that in the trial and adjudication of some cases, there are often tensions and conflicts between emotional reasoning and the law.

This paper examines the use of emotional reasoning in ancient and contemporary judicial decisions, and finds that although there are many differences in their performance and characteristics, they do exist in the psychology of the people and judicial practice in different times, and their role and influence cannot be ignored. The author believes that the use of emotional reasoning on the construction of the rule of law has both advantages and disadvantages, only to accurately grasp the limits of emotional reasoning into the law.

To give full play to the positive role of emotional reasoning, so that emotional reasoning and the law organic combination, play a strong, complementary and mutually beneficial, in order to better resolve social conflicts, promote social harmony, and promote the rule of law to build a steady and orderly development. Evidence culture, refers to the spiritual kernel that governs the practical activities of evidence, as well as the sum of the concept of evidence, evidence system, evidence practice, the use of evidence, organization and facilities and the meaning of evidence.

Evidence culture has five forms of expression, namely, conceptual form, institutional form, practice form, artifact form and meaning form. Chinese traditional evidence culture, refers to the 20th century in the late Qing dynasty before the revision of the law in the long history of the gradual formation of the overall spirit and expression of the form of evidence culture is different from the modern evidence culture of a type of evidence culture.

The significance of justice for the rule of law:

First, justice is a conventional form of legal realization. Justice, as an authoritative way of the realization of law, is able to transform legal justice from the institutional normative form to the facts of social life by means of legal procedures. As Radbruch said: justice brings law to earth.

Secondly, justice is the direct defender of the orthodox status of the legal order and the authoritative force to support the rule of law. Justice performs the function of reproducing orthodoxy as a fundamental fulcrum for the maintenance of the political and social system. Almost any kind of conflict or controversy that occurs in the society can be absorbed or neutralized by the litigation and trial when it cannot be resolved despite various decisions and when it contains the danger of bringing a major impact on the orthodoxy of the political and social system.