"Old Lin is the first teacher in New China to teach foreign legal history. In the early 1950s, Lin Lao often listened to Soviet experts in the evening and gave lectures to undergraduates the next day ... "On the morning of May 5, Professor Hua, vice president of the National Foreign Legal History Research Association, introduced Lin Rongnian.
At 9: 00 am on June 1 Sunday, Lin Rongnian got ready early and waited for the arrival of the reporter in the spacious and bright living room.
External legal history
Many disasters are Lin Rongnian's personal feelings about his primary and secondary school days.
1928 In May, Lin Rongnian was born in Yixingbu Village (now Yixingbu Town, Beichen District) in the northern suburb of Tianjin. My father is a carpenter in tianjin polytechnic university. He wants his children to read more books and get an education. However, the poor family and the sufferings of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the Liberation War made Lin Rongnian's study intermittent.
1949 65438+ 10 month, Tianjin liberation. Lin Rongnian, a senior in high school, is very excited. He wholeheartedly welcomed the PLA to settle in the school. As the president of the Student Union, he actively assisted the cadres of the Party to carry out student work, hoping to study in the new revolutionary school.
1July, 949, Lin Rongnian graduated from high school and was admitted to the Chinese Department of Tianjin Normal University. His family is happy for him. At this time, he saw the brochure of the People's Government of North China on the establishment of "China University of Political Science and Law", which said "to train legal talents in new China". Regardless of his family's complaints, he was not afraid of losing the chance to be admitted to Tianjin Normal University, so he took the train to Beijing and went straight to the maritime warehouse to apply for "China University of Political Science and Law", determined to be a "revolutionary judge". He passed the exam smoothly.
"This university of political science and law is not now China University of political science and law. It is the predecessor of the Law Department of Renmin University of China. " Lin Rongnian knows this history like the back of his hand. 1949101On October 23rd, Lin Rongnian attended the opening ceremony of China University of Political Science and Law presided over by President Xie Juezai. 1950 In March, 100 many students, including Lin Rongnian, moved to the Iron Lion Hutong in the east of Beijing, becoming the first batch of law undergraduates in China Renmin University. On October 3rd, the same year/kloc-0, Lin Rongnian witnessed the grand opening ceremony of China Renmin University, which was presided over by President Wu and attended by other leaders.
"This year, I experienced three jumps, first undergraduate, then graduate, and finally teacher." Lin Rongnian is unforgettable about this process. 1one day in July, 950, he and four students, including Fu and Zhang, were called to talk by the leaders of the law department. Lin Rongnian was very happy and thought that his application to participate in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea was approved. But the leaders did not talk about resisting US aggression and aiding Korea, and asked them to be graduate students in the teaching and research section of legal history.
At the beginning of its establishment, the Law Department of Renmin University of China set up a legal history major modeled on Moscow University in the Soviet Union. However, at that time, the legal history experts of the Soviet Union were not in place, and the work of the teaching and research section had to be carried out. So, at the end of 1950, Lin Rongnian and Fu, who had just learned some basic postgraduate courses, were transferred to the teaching and research section of legal history as teachers.
At that time, the teaching and research section of legal history set up three courses, namely, History of China State and Legal Power, History of Soviet State and Legal Power, and General History of State and Legal Power (that is, the history of foreign legal systems other than China and the Soviet Union). Lin Rongnian was appointed as the teacher of General History of State and Legal Rights (that is, the current history of foreign legal system). As a result, Lin Rongnian became the first teacher in New China to teach foreign law history.
For this process, Lin Rongnian joked that he was "driving ducks to the shelves". "However, this' shelf' is worth it."
Learn while teaching.
Although he has become a graduate student and a teacher, Lin Rongnian, after all, has not studied law and foreign legal history in depth and feels great pressure. But this is the trust of the organization, and Lin Rongnian feels that it must be done well anyway.
During the day, when there is no teaching task, Lin Rong will take graduate students to learn foreign legal history professional courses from Soviet experts; In the evening, I have to go to the "Night University", which is a course offered by Soviet experts to the teachers and cadres of Renmin University of China, including Russian, political economy, unified party history (the historical knowledge of the Soviet Party) and the history of the new-democratic revolution. "Then when will you prepare your lessons?" Lin Rongnian smiled at the reporter's question. He said, "I was young at that time and burned the midnight oil every day." In those years, Lin Rongnian hardly slept before 1 in the morning.
Lin Rongnian's efforts were not in vain. After the first class, the students applauded. "This has given me great support and encouragement. It is my undergraduate who listens to my lectures! " Lin Rongnian worked harder. The students like him very much, because he talked about code of hammurabi in the first class, so he was nicknamed "code of hammurabi".
Lin Rongnian believes that when talking about legal history, we should pay attention to the accumulation of historical materials and try our best to master historical knowledge. As a result, his figure often appears in libraries of major universities and old book stalls in Liulichang and other places. "Unfortunately, old legal history works are almost nowhere to be found." But Lin Rongnian still does not give up all opportunities to collect and sort out materials, and slowly accumulates them. If he has reading feelings, he writes them on cards. Gradually, his cards accumulated by studying books such as General History of the World became smaller, and it was much easier to talk about classes.
1949 In February, the Central Committee of China abolished the Kuomintang and the Instruction on Determining Judicial Principles in the Liberated Areas, and knowledge related to the old law could not be taught in the classroom. China Renmin University, as a newly-built university, has many Soviet experts, and its law department is known as the "machine tool" of legal education at that time. University teachers from all over the country come to China Renmin University for further study and learn new legal knowledge. Professor Lin Rongnian's course of foreign legal history has also been recognized inside and outside the school.
From 65438 to 0954, Lin Rongnian was seconded to Peking University to teach the history of foreign law, and was also hired as a lecturer by President Ma Yinchu, who issued a letter of appointment.
Has been teaching the front line.
1960, Soviet experts withdrew. How to set up the course of legal history? Lin Rongnian believes that it is unscientific to talk only about the legal history of the Soviet Union and not about the legal history of Russia. He believes that "history comes from the old times, is a continuation of yesterday, but also indicates tomorrow." Inheritance should be criticized, but it should not be "one size fits all" or "one stick to kill" for an era. At the suggestion of Lin Rongnian, the course "Soviet State and Legal History" was cancelled and replaced by Russian legal history, which was merged into foreign legal history.
"Except for the two undergraduates of 1958 and 196 1, I told almost every undergraduate of China Renmin University before the Cultural Revolution about the history of foreign law, and also instructed every graduate student in the teaching and research section to study the history of foreign law." Lin Rongnian laughed and said that he had been a "teacher" in the front line of teaching. Even during the Cultural Revolution, he still taught foreign legal history. 197 1 year, one year after the May 7th cadre school in Jiangxi province was decentralized, Lin Rongnian returned to Beijing early and was transferred to Beijing Normal University (now Capital Normal University) to teach the history of capitalist movement. He wrote two chapters of lecture notes.
After years of accumulation, Lin Rongnian has accumulated a lot. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, he wrote an article on the inheritance of law and sent it to People's Daily. Just in time for the publication of the first issue (inaugural issue) of 1979 Legal Studies, this article was recommended for publication in the inaugural issue. Lin Rongnian put forward in his article that "history should be critically inherited, whether ancient or foreign, and all valuable things should be critically used for reference, and foreign legal history should be inclusive and innovative". After the article was published, it caused discussion in academic circles. It also attracted the attention of foreign academic circles and was reprinted by academic journals in the Netherlands, Japan and other countries.
Another paper by Lin Rongnian, Talking about Human Rights, was published in 1980 Learning and Exploration (the first issue). This article was written by him and Zhang. "I wrote the theoretical part, and he wrote the latter part about the human rights situation in China." Based on legal historical materials, this paper refutes the views of western scholars on human rights issues.
"The twelve tables law of ancient Rome contains the concept of' thing' and the clause of' territorial right'. Later, the concepts of property right and other property rights in the property law were inherited from Roman law. The history of foreign legal system should make the past serve the present, make foreign things serve China and be inclusive of innovation. " In the article "Several Issues in the Study of Foreign Legal History", Lin Rongnian expounded his own core views, and also systematically expounded the basic issues of foreign legal history, such as the concept, research object, historical differences and the relationship with other disciplines.
"My teaching career can't be separated from textbooks." From 65438 to 0980, Lectures on Foreign Legal History (Three Volumes) edited by Lin Rongnian was published by Renmin University of China Press as an "internal exchange textbook", which was one of the earliest textbooks on foreign legal history published in China since the reform and opening up, and was adopted by most universities at that time.
1982, deputy editor-in-chief of Lin Rongnian, editor-in-chief of the editorial department of the law textbook of the Ministry of Justice, and the national unified higher law textbook "History of Foreign Legal System" was published. Since then, he has edited ten different versions of foreign legal history textbooks in 1992, 1994, 1999 and 2003 until this year. Recently, the fourth revised edition of the textbook Foreign Legal History edited by him has just been published. At the same time, he edited many papers such as the Journal of Foreign Legal History and published many representative papers.
It was also in the process of compiling textbooks from 65438 to 0982 that scholars such as Lin Rongnian elected the respected Chen Shengqing (the first and second president of China Foreign Law History Research Association) as the president and established the National Foreign Law History Research Association. Lin Rongnian became one of the founders, later served as the third president of the research association, and is still a consultant.
Sit on a bench
Born in 1928, Lin Rongnian is very old, but he still remembers what Fan Wenlan said 58 years ago.
It was in 195 1 year that historian Fan Wenlan was invited to attend the symposium with the theme of "How to build the legal history of China". When talking about "how to do legal history and how to learn", Fan Wenlan said to young teachers in the legal history teaching and research section such as Lin Rongnian: "To learn, the bench should sit cold for ten years, and the article cannot be empty."
Lin Rongnian said that this sentence almost affected his life. He not only urged himself with this sentence, but also educated his students with the spirit shown in this sentence.
From 65438 to 0980, according to the instructions of the Ministry of Education, the whole country began to recruit graduate students with degrees. As the first master tutor, Lin Rongnian recruited two graduate students, including Liang Zhiping (director of the Legal and Cultural Center of China Academy of Fine Arts). Liang Zhiping gave him the impression that he likes reading, quiet and practical. He remembered that Liang Zhiping was assigned the task of reading classic works. Unexpectedly, Liang Zhiping read through four volumes of Selected Works of Marx and Engels! Another favorite pupil of Lin Rongnian is Mi Jian (a professor at China University of Political Science and Law). 1982 Professor Chen Chaobi of Xiamen University recruited three graduate students, including Mi Jian. "Unfortunately, Professor Chen Chaobi passed away soon." Lin Rongnian was invited as a special tutor to teach Mi Jian and other students together with Hu Dazhan of Xiamen University. Now, these two students are well-known scholars in academic circles, and Lin Rongnian is very happy with their achievements.
"I seldom participate in academic activities now, but I am very interested in the construction of foreign legal history and the development of young scholars." Looking out the window, Lin Rongnian said with a smile.