ISCLH Book Review Series: 賤訟與健訟：清代州縣訴訟的基本結構 [Suppressing Litigation and Litigious Practice: The Structure of County Litigation in the Qing Dynasty]. By Deng Jianpeng 鄧建鵬.

Jiansong yu jiansong: Qing dai zhouxian susong de jiben jiegou 賤訟與健訟：清代州縣訴訟的基本結構 [Suppressing Litigation and Litigious Practice: The Structure of County Litigation in the Qing Dynasty]. By Deng Jianpeng 鄧建鵬. Shanghai: Shanghai Joint Publishing Company, 2024. Pp. 448. RMB 98.

Reviewed by Bai Yang (Shanghai University of Political Science and Law)

Deng Jianpeng’s 2024 monograph, Suppressing Litigation and Litigious Practice: The Structure of County Litigation in the Qing Dynasty, makes an important contribution to the study of Qing litigation institutions and judicial practice. The book begins by identifying a critical gap in existing scholarship—namely, the insufficient attention paid to spatial variation, temporal evolution, and the agency of litigation participants in Qing county-level judicial practice. In response, the author not only expands the breadth of source utilization—systematically organizing and analyzing a vast corpus of judicial archives and official documents—but also strengthens the theoretical rigor and depth of argumentation. The book reconstructs a comprehensive portrait of the litigation scene in Qing county governments and uncovers its underlying operational logic.

One of the book’s most original contributions is the conceptual pairing of “suppressing litigation” (jiansong 賤訟) and “litigious practice” (jiansong 健訟) as a central structural contradiction permeating the system. “Suppressing litigation” refers to officials’ negative, deterrent attitude toward lawsuits, aiming for an ideal state of “no litigation” through moral instruction of the populace and suppression of litigation initiation. By contrast, “litigious practice” describes situations in which parties, to have their cases heard or attract magistrates’ attention, resorted to extraordinary measures beyond normal procedures or persistently appealed after initial judgments. The tension between officials’ ideology of suppression and the people’s need to resolve disputes through litigious acts formed a stable, pervasive feature of Qing county litigation. As the author emphasizes, these discourses were mutually dependent, mutually stimulating, and reinforcing. 

The book first provides a detailed analysis of the institutional design and practices of Qing litigation, including: the classification of lawsuits (Chapter 1); pre-trial controls such as plaint-form regulations (zhuangshi tiaoli 狀式條例) (Chapter 2) and the official scribe (guan daishu 官代書) system (Chapter 3); the scope, qualifications, and responsibilities of litigation agents (baogao 抱告) (Chapter 4); the challenges and value orientations related to evidentiary rules (Chapter 5); the stylistic conventions of plaints and the influence of secret pettifogger handbooks on plaint drafting (Chapter 6); and state regulation of litigation masters (Chapter 7). These procedural tools reveal how the state sought to suppress litigation—such as plaint-form regulations that confined pre-trial conducts within narrow bounds, official scribe practices that allowed magistrates to pre-screen petitions and discourage unnecessary complaints, and the litigation-agent system that restricted plaintiffs’ access to the judiciary. Moreover, evidentiary regulations raised the threshold for filing lawsuits, curbing exaggerations while providing officials with pretexts for dismissals. In response, litigants and pettifoggers employed various strategies, such as framing accusations with moral, legal, and rational appeals, and recasting ordinary disputes as severe cases of “life and theft” to attract official attention and bypass barriers to litigation.

Following this, the book examines adjudication patterns in Qing civil disputes, noting that statutory law primarily functioned for county magistrates as a bargaining tool for “restoring harmony” and as a basis for moral instruction, rather than as a strictly applied adjudicatory norm. Officials, aiming primarily at dispute resolution, sought temporary stability and the cessation of conflict rather than the “rule of law” in the modern sense. This orientation, however, often encouraged repeated litigation and appeals, which in turn reinforced the officials’ determination to suppress litigation (Chapter 8). The book also addresses the issue of backlog cases and highlights the limitations of higher-level judicial supervision (Chapter 9). These analyses reveal the institutional logic shaping county magistrates’ judicial behavior within a specific political context.

Finally, the author explores the fundamental forces that sustained and distorted the entire litigation system—namely, limited fiscal resources and official ideology. These factors turned suppression into a narrative strategy for shifting governance burdens and concealing institutional shortcomings, attributing judicial problems to the “crafty litigiousness” of the populace and the “incitement” of pettifoggers. Paradoxically, such suppression failed to reduce litigation; instead, it provoked strategic responses, leading to an outward increase in both the form and volume of litigious activity. Official countermeasures often prompted more sophisticated litigation tactics, creating a cycle of “suppression—strategic rebound—harsher suppression.”

Centering on the dichotomy of suppressing litigation and litigious practice, the book offers a multifaceted investigation of litigation in the Qing dynasty, spanning legal, social, fiscal, and intellectual history. Drawing on multidisciplinary theories, methods, and sources, it constructs a three-tiered dynamic analytical framework—“structure–institution–behavior”—that reveals the interconnections and reciprocal influences among these levels; particularly, how institutions shape behavior and how behavior, in turn, reshapes institutions and structures. This comprehensive approach provides a panoramic and multi-dimensional interpretation of the complex phenomenon of litigation in Qing local society. The study insightfully illuminates the dynamic, paradoxical interplay between official ideology, institutional design, and popular litigation practice, moving beyond earlier research that focused solely on official anti-litigation attitudes or popular litigiousness. It thus offers a compelling and distinctly Chinese explanatory paradigm for understanding the intricate operational logic of Qing grassroots justice.

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