Judicial Normalcy under Japanese Occupation: Cases at the Songjiang District Court, 1939–40

Abstract: The legal-judicial reform that took place in the final decade of the Qing dynasty and the Republican era produced, by 1937, certain measurable achievements in terms of building judicial institutions and establishing judicial procedures according to the principles of the rule of law, judicial independence, and due process. This was especially true of such a core region as Jiangsu province. The Japanese invasion of China in 1937 and subsequent occupation of a larger part of Jiangsu caused initial social-political chaos and disruption of the judicial system. After the collaborator government) was founded in Nanjing in 1938, however, a sort of judicial normalcy was restored in the part of Jiangsu controlled by the Japanese and the collaborator government. The institutional and procedural forms and norms established prior to 1937 were carried forward, and the judicial system operated as designed, and as well as could be expected even under the best times of the Nanjing decade. Based on a set of criminal and civil cases from the Songjiang District Court, one of the sixteen district courts established in Jiangsu by 1937, this paper takes a close look at how criminal and civil cases were processed by the court, thus illustrating the important and far-reaching legacy of the judicial reform of 1901-1937 during the wartime and beyond.