Essentials of Real Estate Law and Reference Guide for Legal Professionals Series

Author: Tang Qingyang, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-01-01
Features: A senior judge of the Supreme People's Court once said that in a civil law country like China, the process of judges making rulings is essentially one of finding legal grounds and applying legal reasoning to interpret the law. Many legal experts deeply agree with this view. In fact, whether it is judges or other legal professionals, when encountering specific legal issues, the primary tasks they need to focus on are: on one hand, determining the nature and category of the issue in legal theory; on the other hand, finding relevant legal grounds and, based on this, applying legal reasoning to apply the law and resolve the issue. In this sense, current legal textbooks and theoretical works on law are not yet closely aligned with the actual needs of legal professionals. Other legal practice-related books also face similar issues—either they provide simple interpretations of legal provisions or simply compile and list laws and regulations, failing to adequately meet the deep-seated needs of legal professionals. Based on this understanding, we held two expert workshops attended by senior judges and lawyers, fully understanding the actual needs of legal professionals. We then organized nearly 100 legal experts into 18 expert groups, categorized by different legal disciplines, and spent two years writing this series, "Advanced Legal Assistants for Legal Professionals."
Considering the breadth of coverage and the key and difficult issues in judicial practice, the first batch of books in this series focuses on 18 commonly used legal disciplines. Each book in the series is organized into two parts: "Essentials" and "Basis Guidance." The "Essentials" section lists issues (main purposes of provisions) set by current legal documents and other difficult issues that may arise in judicial practice. On the surface, these topics may not seem as targeted as question-and-answer or case-based questions, and some may even appear as dry terms. However, these topics are actually the "points" of each legal discipline, and any issue in practice within a legal discipline can be categorized under these "points." The content of these topics is not written in the lengthy style of academic monographs or papers, but in the form of expert opinions, concisely explaining legal principles and highlighting key considerations in judicial practice.
The "Basis Guidance" section lists as comprehensively as possible the specific legal grounds related to each topic. The legal grounds in our country are multi-layered, including laws passed by the National People's Congress and its Standing Committee, administrative regulations, departmental rules, and normative documents passed by the State Council and its departments, as well as judicial interpretations issued by the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate. Among these grounds, laws naturally have the highest authority. However, some legal provisions are quite general, and the understanding and handling of many specific issues in practice still require supplementation by relevant grounds issued by administrative and judicial departments. Therefore, the "Basis Guidance" section clearly identifies the names, publication dates, and issuing departments of all the above grounds, and includes the specific provisions applicable to each essential topic (for some larger topics that require referencing the full text of the basis or involve uncommon specialized issues, to save space, we have only noted the names, publication dates, and issuing departments of the grounds, omitting the specific provisions. Readers can find them in the specific topics later or in other legal compendiums).
With the clear framework of the "Essentials" topics, the authoritative legal reasoning of experts, and the detailed and specific legal grounds, the complete format of each legal discipline in the series is formed. We believe that this innovative format for legal books can largely meet the actual needs of legal professionals and will become their convenient and practical reference assistants.
It should be noted that due to the wide range of legal disciplines covered by this series, the workload of writing is substantial. The authors involved come from various sectors, including judicial practice, teaching, and research, belonging to different industries and professions. Although we strive for uniformity in the writing format, there are still obvious differences in language style and expression among different books.