Li Long's pre-mortem photo. Courtesy of respondents
In 2016, Li Long (center) won the second Li Buyun Law Award. Courtesy of respondents
In May 2008, Li Long (front row) was with the students. Courtesy of respondents
Beijing, 18 Dec (Xinhua) -- On 18 December, the Xinhua Daily Telegraph carried a report entitled "A Law Professor Who Used Innocent Reasoning to 'Drag Back 14 Lives' -- Remembering Li Long, the Architect of Jurisprudence in the New Era."
"Life is short, I am old, a bumpy life, several tribulations, and finally ushered in the spring of the rule of law!" After 40 years of hard work, I have made little contribution to the rule of law in China. This book is my last book, which took a full year to fill in the gaps in the history of Chinese jurisprudence, but its ability is limited and it is difficult to meet expectations. Please criticize and correct the legal community! ”
These are the words of Li Long, an 82-year-old senior professor of humanities and social sciences at Wuhan University, a jurist and legal educator, in his last independent academic monograph published last year, "The History of the Development of Chinese Jurisprudence.". This work is Li Long's last academic life, touching the world of Chinese with the big hand of thought, presenting a picture of traditional Chinese jurisprudence that has lasted for two thousand years.
In the winter of Gengzi, on December 2, Li Long drove to the west of Hexi in Wuhan at the age of 83, and the academic community lost a giant of law.
When I read this passage at the end of Mr. Li Long's book again, Tu Yunxin, a doctor of law at Wuhan University and a young teacher at the Law School of Fudan University, burst into tears in the corners of his eyes, and the figure of this elder and teacher wearing a gray jacket with a Hunan Mandarin accent appeared in the tear-filled world of the woman.
One of the earliest Chinese jurists to explore human rights issues
He was the first to propose the concept of humanistic legal concept in the field of jurisprudence
20 years of study, 20 years of unjust imprisonment, more than 20 years of teaching. Mr. Li Long's life and academic life reflect not only the life journey of an elderly legal scholar, but also the legendary life path of a generation of Chinese legal scholars in the midst of the drastic changes of the times.
Since he was a child, Li Long has liked to read Ancient Chinese and Foreign Books, and his reading range is extremely wide. Among the many books, he most favored ancient Chinese Confucianism, jurisprudence, and works related to Chinese and foreign history. His uncle, Li Zuyin, was a well-known jurist who studied in Japan and served as the dean of the law department and the dean of the law school at Hunan University. Li Long was deeply influenced by his uncle since childhood, loved to read law books, and developed a strong interest in law.
Zhang Wanhong, executive director of the Institute of Human Rights Studies at Wuhan University, still remembers the first time he met Professor Li Long in luojia mountain in the late summer of 1993.
At the opening ceremony of the 3002 ladder classroom, Professor Li Long wore a duck tongue hat and delivered a speech full of Xiangyin, and Zhang Wanhong remembered a sentence: "My uncle is a famous hua scholar. Later, I learned that the "hua scholar" was actually a jurist.
In fact, Li Long showed his legal talent when he was young. When he was in college, Li Long, who was less than 20 years old, wrote a paper on his initial conception of humanistic law and published it in newspapers and periodicals such as Guangming Daily, which was well received. In the text, he reveals the humanistic care embodied in the law. In the late 1980s, when the legal circles launched a great debate on the "essential attributes of law", Li Long published an article entitled "A Brief Discussion on the Law of public interest", which applied humanistic legal thought to the study of the nature of law.
In the 1990s, as the construction of democracy and the rule of law advanced in depth, Li Long gathered the perspective of humanistic legal outlook on the human rights spirit of law, and the book "TheOry and Practice of Human Rights", of which he was the executive editor-in-chief, was unique in the history of Chinese rights law research with a huge production of nearly 2 million words, becoming one of the most authoritative and comprehensive landmark works on the study of Chinese rights, and was called a classic of human rights legal studies.
Whether in history or in reality, people living in a particular time and space have always held many different views, propositions, or interpretations of the "Fa." In Li Long's view, all legal activities, from establishing legal principles to engaging in legal practice, must take the all-round development of people and the fundamental interests of the people as the starting point and destination, respect personality, conform to humanity, pay attention to humanity, and protect human rights, and on this basis, build a legal system that focuses on and serves people.
Based on this, Li Long creatively put forward the theoretical idea of building a human rights law system with Chinese characteristics. Li Long is one of the earliest jurists in contemporary China to explore human rights issues, and a pioneer in the study of constitutional law and jurisprudence on human rights issues in China. The "humanistic view of law" put forward by him emphasizes the humanistic care of law and the pursuit of the ultimate value of man, and is regarded as the most representative academic achievement in Li Long's research.
(Subtitle) Chivalrous Professor
"14 lives were taken back from Huangquan Road"
Mr. Li Long is full of bumpy life experiences, which are lamentable. What is admirable is that Li Long did not choose to complain or give up after going through the ups and downs, but showed the difficult exploration of legal truths that are both universal knowledge and individualized practical qualities by a Chinese intellectual.
At the age of 21, Li Long was mistakenly classified as a "rightist" for some of his remarks on the "Principle of Presumption of Innocence" and "On Socialist Democracy" and sent to Bali lake farm in Puchun County, Hubei Province, for transformation. The days on the farm were very hard, but Li Long did not give up the pursuit, but used his rest time to read and write. In this way, he continued to secretly study and complete his theory of innocence, and wrote China's first basic theory of legal science from the folk, "Introduction to the State".
However, after Li Long's research was discovered, it was imposed with stricter regulations. In 1959, Li Long was imprisoned, and the drastic changes in social structure and the revolutionary political movement in the exploration of the road of construction changed the trajectory of the 22-year-old legal youth.
Just when Li Long was on the verge of despair, his full talent saved him. The "Hubei Xinsheng Bao" sponsored by the prison was short of manpower and wanted to select a person who understood Marxism and law to be the editor, and Li Long was just the best candidate.
He was separated from ordinary prisoners and could read books and write articles. Li Long, who was born after death, once again immersed himself in the sea of books, this time he could read all kinds of books with honor and integrity, and knowledge also brought great satisfaction to his heart in a desperate situation. Later, Li Long sometimes laughed and talked, and at that time, he really encountered a "beautiful difference".
By the time he returned to his alma mater, Li Long had become the oldest graduate in the history of Wuhan University. January 24, 1980 was Li Long's 43rd birthday, and it was on this day that he regained his freedom. Occasionally recalling those difficult years, Li Longdu will still sigh: "It was that experience that tempered me." A person's life is to dare to fight against difficulties and be good at rising up in adversity."
After regaining his freedom, Li Long was assigned to teach at Hubei Normal College. In order to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of more people and to realize his own belief in jurisprudence, Li Long's heart began to germinate the desire to reconstruct jurisprudence.
In order to verify the study of jurisprudence from actual cases, Li Long began to work part-time as a lawyer. In the cases he received, the lives and rights and interests of 14 prisoners who were almost wrongfully convicted of death were defended to varying degrees under Li Long's defense, and 3 of them were acquitted and released. Li Long became famous for a while, and his theory of "innocent reasoning" was also fully affirmed by the legal community.
Li Long believes that the criminal suspect cannot be found guilty before the court's judgment, but to assume that he is innocent is also a manifestation of the protection of human rights. "Collecting materials under the condition of assuming the innocence of the criminal suspect can avoid the prior ideological confirmation of a person's guilt and only collect evidence of guilt without considering the one-sidedness of the evidence in terms of his innocence, and can ensure the authenticity and reliability of the materials."
Since 1980, more than 160 academic papers representing his insights have been continuously published in authoritative journals such as Legal Studies and Chinese Social Sciences.
Li Long provides a wonderful defense as a criminal defense lawyer, and at the same time publishes insights in legal research in various journals and magazines. In 1988, under the appreciation of Han Depei, a grandmaster of the international private law generation, Li Long was able to return to Wuhan University to teach. In 1989, Li Long was hired as a professor and doctoral supervisor at Wuhan University.
Professor Li Long, who returned to his alma mater, radiated more vigorous academic vitality in the 1990s, editing the classic "Jurisprudence" textbook and creating the famous "Five Theories" structure in jurisprudence teaching. In 2003, Li Long developed the "Five Theories" into the "Six Theories", thus constructing the paradigm structure of Chinese jurisprudence ontology, development theory, operation theory, category theory, value theory, and correlation theory.
"14 lives were successively dragged back from Huangquan Road", when the wall of the Huangshi District Prison was even plastered with the slogan "Ask a lawyer to find Li Long", and Li Long was also known as a chivalrous lawyer and chivalrous professor.
At the same time, he was one of the first scholars to explore the development of pro bono law. Under his leadership and guidance, Wuhan University has successively created platforms such as the Legal Aid Center of Wuhan University, the Legal Research Center for Public Welfare and Development, and the Human Rights Research Institute.
Pioneer of legal education reform
He proposed that the core curriculum of the undergraduate law major be implemented nationwide
"He created the humanistic view of law, reconstructed the jurisprudence system, and sinicized Marxist jurisprudence; innovated the theory of human rights, broke through the theory of the rule of law, and innovated the theory of constitutional politics and law; and insisted on the combination of moral integrity and ability in the cultivation of talents, and promoted learning with virtue." One of his students, Wang Xigen, dean of the Law School of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, said.
However, Li Long once summed up his life like this: reading, going to jail, teaching.
As a teacher, he attaches great importance to the cultivation of legal talents. Li Long often teaches students to read a lot of books, be diligent in thinking, work hard, promote reading with writing, write in reading, not only to understand the academic frontier, but also to create an academic frontier. And this scholar, who has devoted his life to the cause of law, is personally using his advanced legal education theories and hard work to create, in exchange for peach and plum all over the world.
Li Long brought out 97 doctors and 45 doctoral supervisors. As a teacher, Li Long believes that this is something to be proud of.
"Until the 1990s, there was still a professional distinction in undergraduate education in law. This concept of 'counterpart education' has limited the in-depth development of legal education to a certain extent. To this end, Li Long not only wrote a special article to argue this proposition, but also in 1996, when presiding over the formulation of the legal education reform plan, more specifically proposed that several legal majors that were scattered in the past could be merged into a "legal science" major, and this major includes 14 core courses such as jurisprudence, legal history, constitutional law, administrative law, procedural law, and public international law. After several discussions, this education reform plan was finally approved and implemented uniformly throughout the country, and has been used to this day.
Since teaching, Li Longduo's original intention has not changed, that is, to cultivate "realmed" legal talents. Li Long has explained this many times, "The so-called 'realm' mainly includes three levels, that is, understanding the academic frontier, keeping up with the academic frontier, and creating the academic frontier. ”
The speeches at the opening and graduation ceremonies over the years have been full of literary brilliance and profound meaning, and have swept away the hearts of countless law students, and the comments at the defense meetings of master's and doctoral dissertations have been to the point, and they have not been bothered to say anything, and have enlightened the wisdom of many young students.
Li Long once said that in the 1980s, he was still teaching at the little-known Hubei Normal College, and once attended the National Jurisprudence Annual Conference, after Mr. Shen Zongling made a speech, he stood up and improvised to express a different opinion. The rhetoric is sharp, but the words are reasonable. This wonderful speech attracted the attention of Mr. Shen to him, and then promoted him a lot, opening up a long-term friendship between the two generations of scholars.
A generation of legal masters, the subtle care for students, Zhang Wanhong has a deep memory. During his master's degree, he learned that Zhang Wanhong needed to write a thesis, and as a supervisor, Li Long provided a computer to borrow. At that time, the computer was a luxury, Zhang Wanhong spent more than a year, bought a memory stick for the computer upgrade, and when he returned it, Mr. Zhang wanhong still insisted on giving the cost of the upgrade to Zhang Wanhong. He was at ease with the situation, indifferent to widowhood, but he was very concerned about the lives of his disciples. This marriage has hit a rock, it is time to find a partner; this child has given birth, that child is going to go to college... It's all his business. Students take their children to pay respects to the elderly, and they can receive a big red envelope.
Li Long has a famous saying that has spread widely. He said that teachers can be divided into three types: teachers who only disseminate knowledge are third-rate teachers; teachers who can cultivate students' independent ability are second-rate teachers; and teachers who bring students to a certain level are first-class teachers. Zhang Wanhong believes that Li Long is the love of "using a heart to awaken a heart" to gradually bring students to a higher realm.
"Until the last moments of his life, He remained concerned about the work and scholarship of his students." Xu Juan, a professor at the School of Law and Politics of Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, said that on his sickbed, Mr. Xu still spoke with great vigor, "The great changes that have not occurred in a hundred years." His academic sense and the earnest teachings of "studying Chinese issues and writing Chinese articles" have always accompanied and inspired everyone in the academic family.
Li Long devoted his life to his beloved legal education and research, and was a model and model for a generation of legal intellectuals. The master has gone, and his legendary life has left many precious spiritual legacies to future generations, showing the most persistent exploration, pursuit and deep love of a Chinese legal scholar for the rule of law in the process of drastic changes in the course of his life, inspiring and warming future generations. (End)