| Summary/Abstract |
Ma Xiwu’s Way of Judging” emerged in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region in the 1940s. Generally assumed to be a legacy of Communist revolutionary legal practice in civil law and often described simply as a form of mediation, it is in fact, this article argues, a complicated legal process, produced in a particular historical and social setting. Although generalized as the Party’s policy and problematized when it was promoted to a broader geographical and social reality, it presented an attempt by the revolutionary state to bridge local culture and the modern legal system, to reduce antagonism caused by legal formalism. Ma’s Way created procedures for mass participation in constructing a modern judicial system and redefined the dynamic state–society interplays. As an historical tradition in the making since the 1940s, its multifaceted nature allowed its adoption into the contemporary judicial system and community life in a variety of new forms.
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