清代官方的賤訟策略、影響與重思

The Influence and Reconsideration of Official Suppressing Litigation Strategy in Qing Dynasty

清代官方賤訟策略深受儒家意識形態影響，同時受人口、經濟與社會變遷等客觀因素支配。官員對爭訟普遍持消極看法，並限制當事人啟動訴訟，尤其是超越律例規定，對訟師的打擊擴大化，批令大量訟案由民間調處。但是，糾紛的產生乃社會正常現象，在清中後期生存資源競爭激烈的背景下，訴訟量增長成為趨勢。官員聽訟，定分止爭，為衙門治理社會矛盾的重要途徑，也是王朝統治合法性的基礎之一。訴訟自身存在一定的正當性，訟師亦非完全負面，而是具有重要的社會積極意義。官方的賤訟策略未取得預期目標，反而激化了當事人健訟。

Officials in the Qing Dynasty generally held a totally negative view of litigation, believing that litigation only consumed much time and property of the parties, and litigation was a great harm to the people. Officials tried to educate the public and limit the initiation of litigation, as if they enlightened them, the parties could be far from litigation. The countermeasure also showed that the officials' general delay in the acceptance of cases, direct refusal to hear the lawsuit, severe crackdown on the litigation masters, and so on. If anyone was suspected of giving advice or writing the petition for the parties, he may be judged as a litigation masters, and the risk of severe punishment followed very soon. Driven by the law, many local officials tried to catch the litigation masters. On the one hand, the official suppressing litigation was closely related to the limited local judicial funds. Affected by the financial difficulties and suppressing litigation strategy, the county yamen ordered a large number of disputes to the township security, gentry or patriarch, to replace the formal litigation channels. The final settlement of each case may always had its own special considerations. The result of such dispute settlement shared almost no reference value for other similar cases in the region, and it was difficult to provide sound guidance for the subsequent similar cases. On the other hand, it was difficult to exist a normal expression of the pursuit of private interests. Under the control of this ideology, suppressing litigation was even more strengthened, which had became the "ideological weapon" in the judicial work of local bureaucrats, and suppressed the demands of the parties for legitimate interests. Because of the increasingly severe livelihood, the parties would make the civil case "criminal narrative" and exaggerated the ordinary case as involved with "human life or deadly thief", which may cause the official attention. The official suppressing litigation strategy stimulated the litigiousness, which led to more stringent official litigation suppression. Therefore, the strategy did not achieve the expected target at all, and just produced more litigation. However, the emergence of disputes was a normal phenomenon in the society, and the timely and fair trial of cases by officials only contributed to local stability and reduced the number of lawsuits. The government paid too much attention to the mediation of litigation by the people, severely punished the litigators, and suppressed the start of litigation, which prompted some parties to resort to private violence for their interests, deteriorated the social order, and led to much huge trouble. In the daily government affairs of local officials in the Qing Dynasty, hearing litigation was the most important "public service" provided to safeguard the specific interests of the parties. In addition, the existence of litigation masters had important social significance. Some litigation masters took extremely severe legal risks to make a significant contribution to the protection of the reasonable interests of the parties. In the face of yamen judicial arbitrary, these litigation masters had indispensable significance to the parties who have no way to protect their own rights. Some litigation masters questioned the legitimacy of the judicial power of the yamen with professional knowledge and restricted the judicial discretion of the yamen, which was conducive to the long-term stability of the imperial court in the long run. But the bureaucracy had punished the litigation masters uniformly, stigatized the litigation masters, suppressed the civil forces that restrained the power of local officials, encouraged local officials to be more arbitrary. All above had became a vane of worsening social contradictions.