Ritual? What Ritual? Secularization in the Study of Chinese Legal History, from Colonial Encounters to Modern Scholarship:
The author explores the reasons why scholars have overlooked the importance of judicial rituals in Chinese legal culture and considers this neglect in the light of scholarship on secularization. He explores the issue by analysing the interaction between Chinese and western judicial practices in the colonial histories of the Straits Settlements (now Malaysia and Singapore) and Hong Kong. The concept of secularization appears to be of relevance to the study of Chinese legal culture, given that secularized societies tend to become differentiated into autonomous sub-systems, religion being restricted in influence to its own sub-system. In fact, however, religion has continuously interacted with a range of other sub-systems in China, including legal ones, which indicates that, in modern Chinese legal culture, religion and the law have not evolved into separate sub-systems.
The publication of the Office of Technology Assessment’s major report entitled Infertility: Medical and Social Choices 1 constitutes a major contribution to our understanding of the many issues surrounding the treatment of infertility. Of special significance is its treatment of the ethical and religious considerations relevant to the new reproductive techniques. In this essay, I want to elaborate upon that treatment. My goals are to identify the major concerns about these techniques shared by many of America’s religious communities and to discuss the implications of the existence of these concerns for the formulation of public policy in this area.