Legal Faith: Chinese Context and Its Significance: Chinese Context and Its Significance

Author: Xu Zhangrun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-12-01
Features: "Law needs to be believed; otherwise, it is ineffective." Do we need to believe, what should we believe, and how should we believe? Berman's words merely provide value support for the role of belief in the path of law. However, the real maze before us is the uncertainty surrounding the very essence of belief. At the beginning of the thematic collection Legal Belief: Chinese Context and Its Significance, his sense of urgency and inner call are clear and strong, rational yeting. Using Berman's words, Chinese legal scholars deeply understand that "law is effective only when it is believed and thus does not require coercion; rulers who govern according to law do not need to rely on the police everywhere. What truly prevents crime is the tradition of obeying the law, which is rooted in a profound and passionate belief—that law is not only a tool for secular policy but also a part of life's ultimate purpose and meaning." However, the overly profound traditional Chinese culture has confined the pursuit of modern legal belief to an extremely narrow space for survival, further shackled by rigid spiritual chains. It is not difficult to imagine how complex the issue of legal belief in China truly is. Raz said, "Offering too many social goals as sacrifices on the altar of the rule of law may make law itself and hollow." In fact, the complexity of the Chinese legal belief issue has long existed against the backdrop of the ongoing modern Chinese society/cultural transformation, which has yet to be fully completed. This book includes nine papers on legal belief recently published in the Chinese legal academia. All the essays are driven by the practical distress of "having laws but not enforcing them," exploring the dimension of legal belief to seek the spiritual homeland of law for Chinese civilization, ultimately striving to form the ideal order for all Chinese people—a safe, free, and equal human order under the rule of law.