ABSTRACT
The contrast forces legal specialists to think about the underlying and often unspoken assumptions upon which each society's legal concepts and institutions are based. In this way, the study of Chinese law provides not only a window into China, but also a mirror onto legal specialists. With so few legal specialists, the Chinese legal system must, of necessity, be simple in structure, method, and content so that relatively untrained people or even members of the general public can play an active role in the legal process. By way of illustration, the historical development of law in China has taken a path very different from that of the West and consequently has produced some very different results. In addition to raising questions about the role of law in different societies, the use of a comparative approach presents several other more subtle, though no less serious, problems.
