ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to attempt a broad overarching view of the Sinitic justice system, past and present. This is really my rst sustained attempt at such a thing since completing my three-volume study of China’s civil justice system of the last four hundred plus years. I use the term and concept of ‘justice system’ because ‘system’ is broader than ‘institutions’ and ‘codes’; it includes also how things actually worked. And ‘justice system’ is broader than ‘legal system’, because the latter tends to focus on the formal institutions and codes, to the neglect of the informal.
