Encountering the Law: Local Courts and Legal Knowledge Production in Eighteenth-Century Korea

• In Event: 266. Reports from the Local Courts: A New Archival Window onto Local Communities in Eighteenth-Century Korea

Abstract

Rich documentary evidence reveals active litigation practices in early modern Korea, implying people’s use of the legal venue to resolve their conflicts regardless of social status and gender. Whereas existing studies have focused on the state’s implementation of the judicial institutions and on the meaning of petitioning or litigating activities by people, the production and circulation of legal knowledge in Chosŏn society has scarcely been examined. How did magistrates at local courts acquire the essential knowledge required to preside over and render verdicts on legal cases? How did ordinary people in local communities access the information needed to formally file their complaints at the court? For local magistrates, resolving litigation cases was one of the primary tasks they were expected to perform, despite a significant lack of formal legal training. For ordinary people as users of the law, preparation of correct and relevant documents, as prescribed by state regulation, guaranteed acceptance of their complaints at the court, thus potentially setting a path to win the case in question. By examining detailed litigation case reports made by a local magistrate of Sangju district in mid-eighteenth century Korea, this paper focuses on how legal knowledge was generated, circulated, interpreted, and employed by people in a local community—both in the local court and outside of it. Understanding the production of legal knowledge then further illuminates the dynamics of social interactions of people among communities, local courts, and the state.

Author

• Jungwon Kim, Columbia University