The text in Lidai panli pandu includes 334 short cases submitted to the Ministry of Justice by governors and governor generals and arranged according to the order of statutes in the Code. Almost all the cases deal with the “Punishments” part of the Code (xinglü ): only the last two are listed under a law belonging to the “Public Works” (gonglü ) part; another one refers to a statute from the “Revenue” part (hulü ), but for some reason it appears in the middle of statutes belonging to “Punishments” [p. 788 in Lidai panli pandu]. Some statutes have only one case listed under them, while others may have more than 50. Each case is captioned with the name of the province that submitted it, the year (with some exceptions), and the name of the criminal. It consists of a short summary of the crime or offense, followed by a sentence proposal based on an analogy with existing statutes or substatutes (using the phrase bizhao/yi … lü/li 比照/依…律/例), sometimes arguing that “there is no article in the law on which the case can be adjudicated” (lü wu zhizui zhengtiao 律無治罪正條), or some similar phrase. A few cases end with the Ministry‟s considerations or with the emperor‟s final decision modifying the proposed sentence. The type of crime (zuiming) is indicated in the central margin. The collection was apparently compiled to serve as a guide for proposing judgments based on analogies; it probably dates from the Daoguang era (as stated by the editor in Lidai panli pandu). Nearly all entries are dated with a year number (omitting the name o the era); as these numbers range from “year 18” to “year 25” and from “year 1” to “year 3”, it is probable that the collection covers the year JQ 18 to DG 3 (1813-1823).
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