China Social Science Review

No.1, 2025

 

 

Zhang Guanzi

 

Chinese legal history research has always been influenced by both historical traditions and Western scholarship. The three trends that have a profound impact on Chinese legal history are: legalization and historiography, doctrinalization and social scientization, and Whiggization and contextualization. These trends can be summarized as: whether the research purpose is historical evolution or legal issues, whether the research field is limited to law or expanded to other disciplines, and whether the research stance is based on modern concepts or historical background. The opposition of the above research trends constitutes the path tension in the study of Chinese legal history. In understanding this path tension, the multi-valued logic way of thinking is particularly important, that is, allowing multiple possible states between the two extremes.