What the judge quoted from the classics.

After the court investigation, Dean D did not directly announce to enter the court debate, but led the two sides to read ancient poems.

Boil beans and burn beans, and the beans cry in the pot.

We are born from the same root. What's the hurry?

The seven-step poem written by Cao Zhi in Romance of the Three Kingdoms was repeated in court. At the request of the president, the plaintiff and the defendant read it ten times in turn.

When I read it for the seventh time, my brother remembered the days when he lived alone behind his back when he was a child and cried. When my brother saw that his brother had a bun that was also broken in half and stuffed into his stomach, he couldn't help but bow his head in shame.

The plaintiff and the defendant in this case are biological brothers. Because of inheriting a homestead, the lawsuit went from the first trial to the second trial, and every inch of land was gone.

After watching it ten times, the two brothers cried and shook hands in court.

This poem has been widely circulated among the people for thousands of years and has become a teaching material for people to persuade their brothers to attack and kill each other.

By skillfully quoting this poem, President D successfully resolved the contradictions arising from this heritage dispute and recalled the deep brotherhood between the two brothers.

Many times, an emotional story is far more convincing than a rational legal provision.

02

Of course, there are also examples of failure.

The judge did the same thing when arguing with a brother about property disputes. When mediating, educate them with seven-step poems and ask them to recite them in court.

When the young monk recited the scriptures, the two brothers recited them ten times. After reciting, I feel like a bean. The other party is frying their own bean jelly, accusing each other of being unkind, cursing and wrestling together.

Everyone teased: it's no use asking a party with such a position and such a thought to recite the poem a hundred times.

Although the result of the attempt is mixed, it has become a habitual routine for civil judges to quote classics in court trials and judgments.

In particular, the husband and wife parted ways, the children refused to support, the brothers turned against each other, and the neighbors turned against each other ... These disputes involving family, identity and neighborhood relations, and the civil judge became an expert on allusions at this time.

03

When a colleague was investigating the scene of a dispute over neighboring relations, the plaintiff insisted that the roadbed was within the scope of his homestead, and the defendant argued that the roadbed was formed in history, not the plaintiff's.

The two sides have their own words and can't produce strong evidence, but the dispute has existed for more than ten years.

The original defendants at the scene were all in the position of a group of family and friends, cheering them up, deadlocked and nervous.

Colleagues were unhurried, unhurried and impatient, and told a story among a group of people:

During the reign of Emperor Kangxi, the mansion of Prime Minister Zhang Ying was adjacent to Wuzhai. When the Wu family built the house, it occupied the Zhang family's open space. The Zhang family refused to accept it and appealed to the county government.

Zhang and Wu are both noble families, and the county magistrate is in a dilemma and cannot judge. When Zhang Ying's family saw that it was difficult to argue, they wrote to Zhang Ying and told him about it, hoping that the Prime Minister would support the family.

Zhang Ying disapproved of the family's behavior of disturbing the court by contending for land boundaries, so he put pen to paper and approved four poems in the family book: "A paper book is only a wall, why not three feet?" The Great Wall of Wan Li is still there today, but I haven't seen Qin Shihuang that year. "

After receiving the letter, the Zhang family felt deeply guilty and gave up the three-foot inheritance without hesitation. The Wu family was moved by the generosity of "the prime minister can hold a boat in his stomach", so he followed the example of the Zhang family and returned the three-foot foundation to form a six-foot wide roadway, which was called "six-foot lane" by the villagers.

After listening to the story, both sides bowed their heads and said nothing, as if they realized something.

Colleagues pursued the victory, seized the opportunity and mediated separately, and finally solved the subgrade dispute that could not be judged by evidence for more than ten years.

Some objective facts cannot be proved by evidence. Some disputes are not completely covered by the function of law. But maybe the judge will create another possibility to solve the dispute by quoting the classics.

04

Not only in court trials and mediation, civil judges have also tried to quote classics as judgments or post-judgment messages.

I once saw a widely recognized and praised judgment quoted by a colleague in Beijing on the Internet.

In the case, the old mother was suffering from terminal cancer, but her children went to court for property.

The two sons took out written evidence, which said that the house was theirs; However, because the written evidence was not notarized, the three daughters did not recognize it. Thus, the testimony of the old mother became the key. The testimony of the old mother eventually favored the son, and the court ruled that the property belonged to the two sons.

In the verdict, this colleague quoted Meng Jiao as saying, "The thread in the hands of a loving mother makes clothes for her wayward son's body." To convince the children: think more about the family, let the last period of the old mother's life go on peacefully, and don't let her close her eyes after death.

After reading the verdict, the son said, the judge said something to my heart. We really should do this to make mom not sad.

The daughter cried when she saw the verdict: We understand what you wrote. We must take good care of our old mother. Please rest assured the judge.

A famous poem aroused the children's love for their mother.

Law is rigid and morality is flexible. Those warm-hearted judges introduced a little ethical and moral advice in their judgments, which made people read warmth and love from cold legal documents.

05

Don't think that quoting classics is the initiative of civil judges, and there are precedents in ancient and modern China and abroad.

In order to reason thoroughly, ancient judges used well-known classic quotations and historical allusions as reasons to convince the parties and the public.

In the Qing Dynasty, Lu Jiashu wrote in the judgment of "Brothers Fighting for Property": "Ren Huang and Huang Yi won the award, and there was a dispute over their ancestral businesses, and the lawsuit was long-standing. Fupeng birds call young, kind birds feed back, and are kind. It is also righteous that bees meet flowers and deer meet grass. The geese gather in a row, which is different from each other and polite. Insects stop drowning, spiders weave webs for food, and they are wise. The cock doesn't crow early, and when the swallow doesn't arrive, it's true. Peter's caterpillar is a fool and there are five permanent members. He is the spirit of all things, so don't you get it? As the old saying goes, the same field is rich and the shell is poor. We should be ashamed to analyze Jing Zhi Tian Jia, and we should be regarded as Jiang Gong. Don't be afraid of change, think it is self-evident, and if you are not handsome, you will be punished according to law. "

The judgment criticized the inhumanity and injustice of Ren Huang and Huang Yi in the property dispute, and compared their injustice with the benevolence and righteousness of animals. It is suggested that the struggle between Ren Huang and Huang Yi for ancestral inheritance violates the ethics of the five permanent members.

Not only the ancient judges in China, but also the Supreme Court of the United States quoted the Book of Rites in a judgment recognizing same-sex marriage? A passage in "Faint Righteousness" uses Confucianism to demonstrate the importance of marriage system.

With the help of the quoted famous aphorisms, the judge not only achieved the purpose of persuading the audience, but also narrowed the sense of distance between the audience and the judge in a humanized way.

06

Of course, some judges overcorrect and carelessly quote classics, which leads to disputes and troubles.

In the judgment of a divorce case, the judge quoted a sentence from Xin Qiji: the crowd looked for him for thousands of Baidu, and suddenly looked back, but the man was in the dim light. This kind of judgment is dubbed "poetic judgment".

Recently, there was one of the most controversial judgments. A judge in Chongqing wrote the expression in the Gospel of Matthew into the divorce judgment. Some people evaluated it as "the most embarrassing judgment in history."

Most of these quotations are controversial because they don't grasp the scale, ignore the legal provisions and only pay attention to moral judgment.

For example, the legal reason for divorce is whether the relationship is broken, and a poem weakens the review of the relationship between the two. Similarly, citing biblical teachings also weakens the color of existing laws.

After all, moral judgment can never replace legal judgment. Therefore, when civil judges are busy quoting classics, don't forget to find out a survey: can this quotation play an explanatory role in the interpretation of the judgment?

06

Some quotations may be rough and the reasoning effect is not satisfactory.

However, at least one thing needs to be explained. Civil judges are not deliberately ostentatious, nor are they mysteriously displaying their brilliant literary talents.

Through the trial and judgment, we can at least see the sincerity of the judge trying to judge and judge from all dimensions of emotion, reason and law.