Based on the Announcement for Educating the People promulgated at the thirty-first year of Hongwu and the records in the legal instruments of Huizhou County in the Ming Dynasty, the article explored the system of adjudication by the aged community people and its actual conditions of operation in grass-root communities, and conceived that this adjudicating system, which had played a certain role of disputes settlement, and provided for the villagers the guaranty of justice and interest protection at that time, was a concentrated reflection of the characteristics of humanity in the traditional law. |