| In the Song Dynasty, past practices, also called precedents, were very important sources of law besides so-called statutory laws, such as the Penal Code, edicts and decrees. Past practices were usually compiled by official historians to record some facts or institutional arrangements in the past, which made them different from the modern statutory law and customary law both in form and in content. According to the time dimension, the past practices of the Song Dynasty can be divided into the practices of the previous generation, the practices of ancestors and the practices of the previous dynasties. Reviewing the past practices almost became a kind of self-consciousness when the emperor and his subjects met with great events in the Song Dynasty. However, sometimes the past practices were not followed. Then the change might be regarded as a new practice by later generations. The legal effect of past practices in the Song Dynasty did not lie in the actual acts of people imitating and obeying the past practices, but in the fact that people had taken them as part of the legal system that must be obeyed. Relying on past practices brought authority, coherence and unity to the political rule of the emperors of the Song Dynasty and, to some extent, overcame the drawbacks of the rule of man, which should not be ignored when we investigate the political and legal systems in the Song Dynasty and even in the whole ancient Chinese history. |
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