Briefly speaking，the development of law in ancient China can be divided into three stages，namely the stage of emergence and initial development，the stage of domination by legalism，and the stage of Confucianization of law. The collapse of Qin Dynasty，the first feudal dynasty in China which lasted for only 15 years，had a profound impact on the development of Chinese history. The failure of the Qin Dynasty served as a warning to the rulers of all the succeeding dynasties，thereby increasing the skepticism towards the idea of the rule of law and obstructing the development of law in China. In ancient China，there existed mainly two modes of legal system：the system of rite-law （lifa） and the system of codes and precedents （lǜlì）. The former，which was the combination and unity of the system of law and the system of rites，had been the most important symbol of the legal system in ancient China and the abolition of the rite-law system was proved to be the most difficult task in the modernization of Chinese law. The lǜlì system，which was formed mainly in the Ming and Qing dynasties，is the key to the understanding of the actual operation of law in ancient China. Under this system，both codes and precedents were taken as legal bases for adjudication of cases. Therefore，it can be said that the legal system in ancient China contained to a large extent the element of the case law system.