Abstract

Statute law system in Chinese history was established at roughly the same time when English common law system was formed in British history. But the two countries have been developing in quite different ways. This paper focuses on the development path of two systems at that period in order to get access to the study of the legal and cultural background of the two law system. From the history, we can see china ancient law was wandering between stability and flexibility. The law code mainly deals with the stability of the law, meanwhile the case code mainly solves the flexibility of the law. Undoubtedly, sometimes law code will conflict with the case code. This conflict condition also occurs in British law. In this research, on one hand, historical analysis was adopted to search for the truth of the legal history; on the other hand, the sociology of law was also adopted to find the interactivity of law and social life. This paper reports on a survey into the legal history. Studies have shown that the China's feudal autocratic was further strengthened and the "case" which is on behalf of the sovereign authority was increasingly important with the development of statutes law system; meanwhile, in British, due to the battle between royal and religious authorities, the legal authority was gradually established. However, no matter which legal system we use, the stability and flexibility of the law system are the most important elements and in order to meet the requirements of society law must be modified accordingly.

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