2. Literature Review

2.1 Theoretical Basis

Law culture refers to the legal life of group behavior and concept. Some scholars believe that the law culture is composed of two parts: one is the legal entity, namely national design and the realization of tangible legislative and judicial activities, such as legal systems, legal norms, legal facilities, law documents; the other is the legal consciousness, namely intangible law culture, such as viewpoints and methods, including the legal thoughts, legal theories, legal concept, legal values, legislative and judicial experience, and so on. Thus, the law culture can be said to be hierarchical. A country’s legal system and norm is a kind of surface structure of law culture, and its deep structure refers to the basic concepts, categories and legal values, concerning people’s accumulation in the long-term social practice, as well as legal thinking modes or manners associated with the production modes.

Laurence M Freedman, in the book the Concept of Law culture: a Reply, in 2003, gives a clear definition, namely law culture refers to certain values, expectations and attitudes of the law and legal system held by a part of public. Law culture, as an important part of human culture, is decided by social economic base: material production conditions. Law culture embodies some of the basic features of legal superstructure: (1) Law culture depends on substance; (2) law culture has the political function; (3) law culture has general applicability; (4) law culture is practical; (5) law culture has historical continuity; (6) law culture has national characters (7) Law culture is mutual melting. 

Chinese and western law culture are products of their own geographical environment, social environment and historical and cultural environment. They generate their own characteristics and differences respectively, but the characteristics of them are different rather than not good. (zhang zhongqiu, 1991:7)

2.2 Studies on Law Culture at Home and Aboard源'自:优尔`!论~文'网www.youerw.com

Law culture was first put up in 1969 in America, proposed by jurist Laurence Freedman in the article law culture and social development. Our introduction of the concept and discussion of law culture began in the 1980s. From the existing data, law culture, as a complete concept and research topic, first appeared in the first issue of Translation of law in 1985 in the mainland of China. Comparative jurist professor Pan Handian translated Theory of Law Culture in America, written by law professor Li S. Weinberg and Judith W. Weinberg in Pittsburgh University. This indicated that our country began to pay attention to law culture. Among Chinese scholars, it is Professor Sun Guohua, a professor of law at Renmin University of China, who first put up law culture as a new legal concept and legal theory. Basic Legal Theory, written in 1985 by him, for the first time discussed the law culture. Since then, the law culture has become a subject of law and attracted our attention. Scholars have published research papers and monographs of law culture, but the scope of the study are limited in a comparative study on the system of Chinese and western national laws or legal thought level, and a few reflect the countries’ features of law culture combined with actual cases.