| The definition of the concept of elder relatives, the compilation of the code and the change of judicial direction towards commutation are the three basic issues in the modern transformation of the crime of killing elder relatives in the late Qing Dynasty. In 1902, the Qing government changed the traditional judicial practice of “only describing the circumstances for which an offender can be sympathized with, but not commuting his sentence” in the old law, and first determined the change of judicial direction towards commutation in the form of judicial precedent. Both Xing Lv Cao An (Draft Criminal Code) (1907) and Xiu Zheng Xing Lv Cao An (Revised Draft Criminal Code) (1910) intended to establish the legal status of maternal grandparents as elder relatives, but finally Qin Ding Da Qing Xing Lv (Imperial Criminal Code of the Great Qing) (1911) did not recognize it, which was directly related to the old legal positioning of maternal grandparents. As for the question of whether a separate chapter should be set up for the crime of killing elder relatives and placed before other chapters in the Code, the communications between and the reasoning given by the two schools of Li and Fa revealed a complex and objective understanding of the old law. In short, by trimming the “Tao” of traditional Chinese law and ethics with “tools” of modern western law, the modern transformation of the crime of killing elder relatives tried to maintain the ethics of filial piety while steadily advancing the reform in the late Qing Dynasty. |
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