Differences between Chinese and Western Legal Cultures

I only know that China practices the civil law system, while many western countries use the Roman law system.

On the one hand, China's classical culture lacks the soil for the development of legal culture. Because our feudal society is too long, it is impossible to form a real legal belief in a society ruled by men, and the legal culture has therefore stagnated. Therefore, in the development of China's legal culture, the classical culture can not give much nutrients, let alone inheritance and integration.

On the one hand, externally, we are forced to develop. The development of China has leapfrogged because of external forces. In order to shorten the distance with developed countries, we adopt the principle of "taking away". Legal culture is basically imported, copying the essence of legal culture inherited by the west for many years, thus separating it from its own traditional culture. This is not only reflected in the law, but also in other aspects.

As for the differences between Chinese and western legal cultures, this problem is very big and involves many aspects. The views that can be considered are as follows:

1, anthropology. Regarding the spirit of law, Montesquieu pointed out that land and population have great influence on the development of law. China has always been a farming civilization, and a large number of water conservancy projects need human governance to be organized. The west is an animal husbandry civilization, and the jungle life of fighting alone makes liberalism overflow, and democracy becomes an inevitable choice.

2. linguistics. The oriental Chinese character system itself is very complex, and its semantics are vague, unstable and over-decorated, which makes the legal text easy to change in the inheritance, the independent interpretation of law enforcers becomes arbitrary, and it is difficult to establish legal beliefs. The western alphabet system has simple and clear semantics, low ambiguity in text interpretation and small space for judges to explain, which is conducive to the formation of accurate legal concepts.

3. philosophy. There are great differences between Chinese and western philosophical systems, and the trend of individualism will inevitably lead to the birth of democracy, and perfect democracy is the premise for the law to be followed. This is the core of Rousseau's social contract theory. We believe in the divine right of monarchy, and envelope moral education rather than legal punishment will inevitably lead to moral generalization and legal concession. The starting point of law is that human nature is evil, and obviously we have always accepted different beliefs.

4. Religion. Catholicism has always had a legal tradition. The Bible is the so-called divine law. The popularization of legal culture by the Holy See and the study of legal texts by missionaries have endowed a profound humanistic background for the inheritance of law. Our traditional Confucianism simply ignores the law, and the so-called legalists also rule by men. A nation without religious belief is bound to suffer in inheriting legal culture.