Of Arsenic and Old Laws: Looking Anew at Criminal Justice in Late Imperial China

Abstract

+ Acting Professor of Law, University of California, Los Angeles. B.A. 1970, Amherst College; LL.B. 1972, University of Cambridge; M.A. 1974, Chinese Studies, Yale University; M.A. 1975, Chinese History, Yale University; J.D. 1977, Harvard University. In the course of researching and writing this Article, I have been fortunate to have received inspiration and guidance from colleagues, mentors, friends, and students here and abroad all too numerous to mention individually. I would, however, be gravely remiss were I not to single out for special thanks Dean Susan Westerberg Prager and Professor Richard L. Abel, Kenneth L. Karst, Arthur I. Rossett, Gary T. Schwartz and Phillip R. Trimble of the U.C.L.A. School of Law; Professors Richard Baum of the Political Science Department and E. Perry Link of the East Asian Languages and Cultures Department of U.C.L.A.; Mr. Chang Wejen (Director) and Ms. Cecilia Kuo-ying Hsu of the Legal History Project of the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica; Jerome A. Cohen, Esq., formerly Professor of Law and Director of East Asian Legal Studies at the Harvard Law School; Dr. Fu-mei Chang Chen of the Hoover Institution on War, Peace and Revolution at Stanford University; Professor Andrew C.K. Hsieh of the History Department of Grinnell College; Professor Jonathan D. Spence of the Department of History of Yale Uniersity; Stanley B. Lubman, Esq.; and my parents, Dr. Hyman and Mrs. Rose Alford.