Justice on the Frontier: Mixed Court of Chinese Eastern Railway

Abstract

The paper discusses the mixed courts of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER). The researchers studied mostly the early stages of mixed courts of the CER, did not use mass data, and did not compare this model of mixed justice with the courts of borderlands of the Russian Empire and the imperial post-reform justice. The paper provides a statistical analysis of court cases in 1908 and 1913 using the reporting sheets. This made it possible to trace changes in activities of a mixed court at a later stage of its functioning. The article reveals changes in the types of civil and criminal cases, the composition of trial participants, the types of court decisions. The study revealed that the number and proportion of inter-Chinese court cases increased significantly. The paper concludes about the multi-component nature of the legal basis of mixed courts. Changes in the staff of the judicial collegiums are analyzed. A comparison of the CER mixed courts with the judicial institutions of the Russian Empire borderlands, with the post-reform imperial justice and the mixed courts of the international settlements of Shanghai is carried out. It is concluded that the mixed courts creatively combined the institutional elements of different judicial system. The analysis of statistical data and descriptions allows to draw preliminary conclusions about the attitude of the population towards mixed courts and the role of this type of justice in establishing law and order on the CER. The study concludes that the mixed justice, bringing together the heterogeneous in origin and characteristics of judicial and legal practices and views, contributed to the formation of a common regional cultural and legal field on the Manchurian frontier.