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Advance in Law
ISSN Print:2707-1499
ISSN Online:2707-1502
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Between Form and Substance: A Rational Debate on Economic Law
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Information:
China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing, China
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Keywords:
Formal Rationality; Substantive Rationality; Codification; Legal Dogmatics
- Abstract: The enactment of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China has triggered a wave of legal codification, and propositions for the formalization of economic law have emerged continuously. Different from civil law, the formalization of economic law is confronted with strong resistance from its long-standing pragmatic inclination. The long-term pragmatism of economic law embodies prominent substantive rationality, which has shaped the responsive character of economic law while hindering its scientization. Meanwhile, the advocacy for the formalization of economic law centers on codification and scientization, aiming to unify the legal system and improve legislative quality. The core of the dispute lies in the relationship between formal rationality and substantive rationality of economic law. This paper combs the historical context of “natural lawpositive law” and the epistemological clue of “subject-object”, clarifies the connotation and logical relationship between formal rationality and substantive rationality, and defines the bottom line and boundary of the formal transformation of economic law. It holds that economic law should maintain necessary formal rationality without unthinkingly copying the over-refined codification model of civil law, and pursue a balanced path between form and substance. Furthermore, this paper constructs a three-dimensional path for the formalization of economic law from the macro level of legal system structure, the meso level of legal analysis paradigm and the micro level of legal language construction, so as to realize the modern rational construction of economic law.
- DOI: (DOI application in progress)
- Cite: Zhang, Q. Y., & Fan, C. Z. (2026). Between Form and Substance: A Rational Debate on Economic Law. Advance in Law, 8(2), 23-32.
