19 12 Dong Kang, a former civil judge of Jinshi Dali Academy in the Qing Dynasty, fled Japan to study law at the University of Tokyo and became a political high-ranking figure among students studying in Japan in modern times. And sold a batch of precious rare ancient books in China to Japanese collectors. 19 13 Dong Kang joined politics immediately after returning to China, and became the president of Beijing Dali University the following year. In the same year, Shen Jiaben died. However, Dong Kang continued to follow the path of Shen Jiaben. In the seventh year of the Republic of China (19 18), he became the president of the Law School of the Republic of China.
A number of laws revised in the late Qing Dynasty were moved by Beiyang government in the early years of the Republic of China. Under the auspices of Dong Kang, the law revision museum in the early years of the Republic of China basically maintained the characteristics of the law revision museum under the auspices of Shen Jiaben in the late Qing Dynasty, and continued to systematically translate and introduce a large number of foreign laws and legal works in accordance with the principle of "applying foreign laws". 192 1 year, Dong Kang became the Chief Justice and achieved an equal political status with Shen Jiaben. In order to further realize the ideal of improving the legal system, he further strengthened the introduction of foreign legal systems. At that time, the Counselor's Office of the Ministry of Justice specially organized and established the "Foreign Code Compilation Room" to replace the original revised law museum. [ 1]
From the foreign laws and legal works introduced by Dong Kang and others during the Beiyang Government, it can be found that the specialized laws and regulations of European and American continental law systems, such as Germany, the United States, Russia and Britain, were intensively translated. In addition, the promulgation of parliamentary organization law, electoral law and local administrative rules and regulations has increased. These are the new trends of introducing "foreign law" during the Beiyang government period, because its system is different from that of the Qing Empire after all, but on the whole, the foreign law and legal thoughts introduced by Dong Kang are the inheritance of Shen Jiaben's thought of improving and using "foreign law" to compromise and amend the law.
1924, Dong Kang resigned and went to Europe for industrial and commercial investigation. On 1925, after returning to China, he became the chairman of China's Guangfu Shanghai Mixed Hospital Committee. After the failure of Beiyang government, the "extraterritorial country ruled by law" entrusted by Dong Kang, the former Qing dynasty, was shattered with the improvement of legal system and the restoration of extraterritorial jurisdiction. Since then, he has left politics, served as the dean of Shanghai Law School, a professor of Soochow University Law School, and established a law firm. He once appeared in court to defend the case of Zhang Jian, a famous industrialist and businessman in Jiangsu, in Nantong where Zhang Jian, a local tyrant and evil gentry, requested to cancel the confiscation of property.
During this period, Dong Kang collected and sorted out a batch of ancient Chinese legal works, studied the legal history of the Qing Dynasty, and completed such works as Lecture on the History of Chinese Legal System, Autumn Trial System and Summary of the Legal System of the Former Qing Dynasty, and compared the autumn trial system in China feudal society with the European and American commutation committees. Since then, he advocated the establishment of the so-called "Oriental legal system" with the Japanese militaristic legal system as the core in the Comprehensive Criminal Evidence Law, which studied the evidence problems in China's ancient criminal law, and regarded China's legal system construction as a vassal of Japanese law to create a legal basis for Japan's invasion of China. [ 1]
After the July 7th Incident, Dong Kang became the chairman of the judicial committee and the president of the Supreme Court of the pseudo "North China Provisional Government", betrayed his motherland and nation, became a traitor, and finally completed the road from "a country ruled by law abroad" to "an oriental legal system" that betrayed the country and sought glory. Shen Jiaben and Dong Kang, two judicial officials who were scholars in the Qing Dynasty, respectively served as the Minister of Justice of Beiyang Government in the late Qing Dynasty and presided over the revision of the Law Museum. What they seek is to modify the traditional China legal system by improving laws, introducing western capitalist laws and legal works, promulgating and amending new laws, improving the administration of justice, rectifying old prisons, and abolishing severe punishments. Although they all fought against Lao Naixuan and others who insisted on maintaining traditional ethics, there is no essential difference in their fundamental sense. Shen Jiaben and Dong Kang's legal system reform is aimed at maintaining the feudal monarchy, which determines that they are against the trend of the times. It should be noted that the foreign laws and legal theories they introduced have played a pioneering role in enriching the research content of China's law, laid the foundation for the development of modern law in China and contributed to the modernization of China's law.
Shen Jiaben and Dong Kang lived in a historical era of radical and conservative, revolution and improvement, full of fierce conflicts. The result of its struggle is not only related to the development of legal culture in China, but also to the fate of the whole society in China. At the same time in Shen Jiaben, a large number of people tried to overthrow the feudal dynasty, and also introduced and translated a lot of bourgeois legal thoughts and political opinions. The democratic revolutionaries represented by Sun Yat-sen and others who advocated overthrowing the feudal system eventually formed the mainstream of social struggle at that time. Through constant struggle, the feudal system and its laws of "I am for the country" and "the divine right of monarch" were ended, and the spiritual bondage of imperial power and feudal ethics to the people for thousands of years was broken, so that the legal system construction in China really embarked on the road of modernization.