The Personnel Administration Legal System’s Forming and Evolving in Early Era Republic of China (1912~1928)
Hui-Ping Feng*
Abstract
From the end of 19th century to the beginning of 20th century, China, an old country, experienced unprecedented changes in its national legal system, meaning its traditional bureaucratic system was largely replaced by Civil Law from Europe, which triggered significant changes in its personnel administration system to meet the new requirements of the time. However, few studies have been made in this area probably because of the difficulty in collecting information about its history. This becomes an initiative for us to explore. While investigating the legal system of the early Republic of China period from 1912 to 1928, we found something quite different from our past impression about the old system. And the most exciting is that there are actually tons of historical documents on this subject. For instance, there were over 900 bureaucratic rules on practice during the period, and this number could be increased to over 3,000 if other administrative orders or decrees were added. In an effort to tell the forming and evolving of this system, this paper presents problem-oriented events in time sequence, covering all the organic acts and regulatory acts under such a different space-time background. We hope this will explain how the people’s consciousness on justice was played a role during that time, and the findings will enable the readers to better understand the forming and evolving of this old legal system, which in turn could contribute to our government’s decision making in the future.
Keywords: personnel administration legal system, civil service regulations and rules, personnel administration institutes, prospective legislation, premature Legislation
* Doctoral Candidate of Fujen University Department of Law, Section Chief of National Development Council, email: feng0001@ndc.gov.tw.