The 8th East Asia Research Salon
Britta Büermann
Seeing Tradition in Modernity: Yang Honglie’s Historiography of China’s Legal System
June 22, 2015, 6pm
KWZ, Conference Room 0.701, Heinrich- Düker- Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen

Abstract:
In the 1930s the eminent legal historian Yang Honglie 楊鴻烈(1903-1977) tried to balance modern Western and traditional Chinese concepts in order to establish a new Chinese legal system (法系 faxi). In the process of transferring Western legal concepts and embedding them in China’s history, Yang developed his own understanding of these concepts. By searching for forerunners in China’s history he
argued against the idea of the West as the only possible judicial paradigm, and
instead looked for indigenous traditions to be re-interpreted in order to suit the purpose of his ideology. In my dissertation project, I research Yang Honglie’s understanding of concepts such as the principle of equality or an independent judiciary and how he put them into a Chinese context; and his overall vision for the future of China’s legal system.

Britta Büermann studied Chinese Studies at the University of Würzburg. In 2006 and 2008, respectively, she spent a semester at Beijing University, and in 2009, she became a junior lecturer at the Department of East Asian Studies of Georg-August-University Göttingen, where she is responsible for research and education in the field of Chinese Law. She is also currently working on her PhD thesis on property law in traditional China.