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After the conquest of the Ming empire 明 (1368-1644), the new rulers of the Qing dynasty 清 (1644-1911) for a few years still made use of the old Ming law code, the Da-Ming lü 大明律. But already in 1646 a new Qing code was issued with the lengthy title of Da-Qing lü jijie fu li 大清律集解附例 "Laws of the Great Qing with collected commentaries and appended precedents". Ten years later a Manchu version was published. In 1689 recent cases were added, and in 1738 again new precedents were incorporated in the code. In 1740 the code was renamed Da-Qing lüli, or short, Da-Qing lü 大清律 "The Qing Code". The last actualization of the code was undertaken in 1910.
The Qing code is 40 juan "scrolls" long. The core of the code were laws (lü 律) that often followed examples of older codexes like that of the Ming or even the Tang dynasty 唐 (618-907) code Tanglü shuyi 唐律疏義. The head chapter (shoupian 首篇) serves to define punishments, delicts, sentences and criteria for judgments, like intentional or non-intentional crimes, official and private cases, first crimes or having previous records. Following the Ming code, all laws are arranged under the ministry under which jurisdiction each law case had to be judged. Below the six ministerial categories, laws are arranged in 30 different topics, like offices, households, land, marriages, granaries, taxes, markets, offerings and sacrifices, military cases, pastures, passes and fords, postal stations, robbery and banditry, bribery, violence, slandery etc., resulting in 436 articles (tiao 條) in total.
Behind the law and the commentary text follow precedents (li 例), i.e. actual law cases, including the emperor's decision how to judge the case or to solve a problem. This decision had the exemplarious character of a precedent was had to be adhered to in similar law cases. Unlike laws, precedents could be altered in the course of time and according to circumstances. A judge, in most cases a district governor or a prefectural magistrate, had always to follow the newest precedents. The importance of precedents in daily business of the Qing law courts was thus far greater than that of the actual laws, and in many cases precedents might be contradictory to laws that had been issued a hundred years before.
The first part of the Qing code is enriched by numerous illustrations.
Source: Yu Bingkun 俞炳坤 (1992). "Da-Qing lüli 大清律例", in: Zhongguo da baike quanshu 中國大百科全書, Zhongguo lishi 中國歷史, vol. 1, pp. 142 f. Beijing/Shanghai: Zhongguo da baike quanshu chubanshe.
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