My life skills in Daming Liver - Chapter 639

c629 legal changes

The news of Jiajing’s death spread quickly. The strangest thing is that the emperor, who regarded the world as private property, officials and ministers as slaves, and the common people as nothing, actually aroused the nostalgia of many people.

When the news spread to Nanjing, some people actually began to miss this independent husband.

He Xinyin also talked about this matter when he was attending a banquet at the Governor’s Mansion. Everyone looked at Su Ze, wanting to see the Governor’s reaction.

Su Ze smiled lightly and said:

“The people in the capital and Nanjing who miss Jiajing as an independent man are all people who have lived peacefully under the favor of the Ming court.”

“Jiajing privately controlled the world to benefit one person, while the capital and Nanjing also privately controlled the world to benefit the two cities. We in the southeast have canceled the privileges of these people, and they will naturally miss the old era when they were riding on the heads of the people.”

The capital and Nanjing were the two capitals of the Ming Dynasty, and the people here were also from the so-called imperial city, which was much superior to other places.

The best things in the world will be sent to these two cities, the top talents in the world will come here to make a living, the richest people in the world will live in these two cities, and even the brothels are the best in the world. of.

But now the entire southeast is developing well. Areas such as southern Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fuzhou are no less than Nanjing, and are even more prosperous because they are close to the sea.

The official administration in the southeast is also relatively clear, and there are not many people running for office. Officials are also required to be trained at the grassroots level, resulting in Nanjing no longer being as important as before.

This also caused the people in Nanjing to lose some sense of superiority.

Su Ze continued:

“Apart from these people, the rest are those ignorant people, those fools who have been ruined by various novels and dramas. They think that they are the geniuses who have reached the top of Qingyun High School through reading. They think that if they go back to that era, It is the children of the rich and powerful clan who can reap the benefits without working hard, and who can dominate and dominate the heads of ordinary people.”

“But what’s the reality? These people may not even be able to pass the exam to become a scholar if they go to school. They are not the children of powerful noble families. They are more likely to be ordinary people who are oppressed by powerful nobles.”

When Su Ze said this, everyone burst into laughter.

In fact, there are not many people like this in Nanjing. The ministers present are all from the Jiajing Dynasty. Xu Wei failed in the imperial examination many times. Even Shen Shixing, a son of a big family and the number one scholar, knew about the corruption and depravity of the Ming court. No one wants to go back to that era.

However, Su Ze also lamented that no matter what era, there are always mourners from the old era. They always feel that they did not seize the opportunities in the new era and can soar into the sky if they return to the old era.

For these people, let them continue to dream about the past.

Su Ze didn’t care about these people. He looked at He Xinyin worriedly.

According to official reports from the Ministry of Punishment, He Xinyin’s health was getting worse.

Su Ze also asked Li Shizhen to diagnose He Xinyin personally. According to traditional Chinese medicine, it was excessive worry and even loss of qi and blood. According to new medicine, it was malnutrition and chronic diseases caused by excessive fatigue.

Li Shizhen’s treatment plan is very simple. Ask He Xinyin to put down his work, eat well and recuperate, and he will recover.

But He Xinyin refused this treatment plan. He often forgot to eat when he was busy, and the department officials and family members begged before he would eat more. He also thought about problems while eating, and often had to reheat a meal twice.

So Su Ze would drag He Xinyin to his house for dinner when he had free time, in order to distract him from the document work.

If we say that the busiest departments among the seven departments in Nanjing are not the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Navy, which operate huge armies and fleets, nor are they the Ministry of Personnel, which manages tens of thousands of officials in the entire country, nor is it the department that manages the entire country’s expenditure budget. Settlement, various tax accounts.

It is not the Ministry of Industry that is building increasingly long railway lines and carrying out water conservancy projects in various places.

Nor is it the Ministry of Rites that sends hundreds of envoys to manage the envoys traveling throughout the world.

It was the Criminal Department headed by He Xinyin.

After He Xinyin took office, he mainly did two things.

The first thing is to separate the administrative work and judicial work of local officials, set up special judges and tribunals in various places, and let special judges handle local judicial practices.

Specifically, it is a four-level and three-review system.

The fourth level refers to the four levels of the judicial system, from the county court, to the prefecture-level court, to the provincial-level circuit court, and then to the highest level of Dali Temple. The four-level courts hear cases step by step.

The third-instance system divides cases into three stages: first-instance, second-instance, and final-instance review.

The first instance is the first trial conducted by the county or prefectural court, and it is also the first judgment.

If the suspect refuses to accept the decision, he or she can submit a second trial to a higher level.

If you are still dissatisfied, you can make a final appeal directly to Dali Temple.

The Ministry of Punishment also established an Autumn Trial Division to review death penalty cases after final trial in Dali Temple.

Of course, in order to save judicial costs, ordinary economic cases and civil cases are generally final in the second instance, and the third instance system is mainly used in criminal cases.

Of course, He Xinyin did not get it right in one step. Judicial talents are now in very short supply, so the main task is to first set up the framework to ensure that there is a court at the government level.

In places like Susong, which are more developed and have more lawsuits, county-level courts are set up to train judicial talents.

In addition to the four-level and three-instance system, He Xinyin’s remaining time was spent on legislation.

He Xinyin first carried out reforms in corporal punishment.

He abolished the more cruel punishments such as Ling Chi, agreed to change the death penalty to hanging, and abolished the part about corporal punishment in the “Da Ming Code”.

He Xinyin believes that if criminals can be corrected, then after the punishment is completed, the prisoners should be allowed to stand on the society, instead of using cruel corporal punishment to make the prisoners unable to stand and continue on the road of crime.

And if the prisoner’s crime is extremely heinous, he should be executed immediately. In this case, there is no need to implement corporal punishment at all.

Extortion of confessions by torture was also prohibited. He Xinyin believed that the high rate of unjust, false and wrongful convictions in the Ming court was caused by torture.

The victims of torture to extract confessions are often ordinary people without power, and this kind of unfair law enforcement allows powerful people to escape punishment.

On this basis, He Xinyin compiled a number of laws by learning from ancient criminal laws and foreign laws, and promoted the laws throughout the country.

What He Xinyin is currently writing is the Administrative Procedure Law, which is a law about people suing the government. This is a law that does not yet exist in the world. All of this depends on He Xinyin’s own thinking and legislation.

It is really difficult to write a book that does not allow unscrupulous people to sue the government for no reason and makes it impossible for the government to administer, but also embodies the legal spirit of the people to restrict the government.