Indispensable but Invisible: Legal Expertise and Juridical Capital in the Governance of Late Imperial China | Lecture by Li Chen

During the Qing period (1644–1912), late imperial China was in theory governed by approximately two thousand local administrators who were appointed for their mastery of the Confucian classics rather than for their administrative or legal expertise. How did these scholar-officials actually carry out the daily tasks of local governance, including judicial administration? Based on a forthcoming monograph, this talk analyzes the training and roles of the thousands of legal specialists who advised local officials behind the scenes and handled most of the judicial and other substantive administrative work on their behalf. Despite their important functions in local governance, these legal specialists were ideologically marginalized. This talk, as well as the larger study from which it is drawn, provides new insights into why they became so indispensable to Qing law and governance and why they remained obscure to outsiders and modern researchers.