Background
He was born in Ningpo, Chekiang, China on May 28, 1899. He was a son of Wu Chia-ch'ang, prominent business man in Ningpo, China.
吳經熊字德生
jurist legislator university professor
He was born in Ningpo, Chekiang, China on May 28, 1899. He was a son of Wu Chia-ch'ang, prominent business man in Ningpo, China.
Ching-hsiung Wu was first placed under a Confucian teacher, but this was distasteful to him because of the strictness of traditional ethics and he entered a school in 1907. He attended Hsiao Shin College at Ningpo in 1914 and Shanghai Baptist College in 1916 to study physics and chemistry.
In 1917 Mr. Wu he entered Peiyang University at Tientsin and after a half year of study there, left to attend the Comparative Law School of China at Shanghai, from which he was graduated with honors in 1920 with Bachelor of Laws degree. Then he went to America in the same year and entered the University of Michigan law school and received his Juris Doctor degree in 1921.
His work was so satisfactory that on the recommendations of Dean Bates and Profs. E. D. Dickinson, Joseph H. Drake and Robert T. Crane of the University, he was given a travelling-fellowship in international law offered by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and studied at the University of the Sorbonne for a year in 1921-1922 and the following year in the University of Berlin.
Ching-hsiung Wu returned to America in 1923 and entered the Harvard University law school as a graduate student,he returned to China in 1924 and joined the faculty of the Comparative Law School of China and during his five and a half years taught some 10 subjects including the law of property, international law, Roman law, German civil law, jurisprudence, philosophy of law, torts and agency.
Upon the retirement of Dean Blume in 1927, Mr. Wu became principal of the school. In the same year he was appointed judge of the civil division of the Shanghai Provisional Court and in one of his decisions laid down the principle that "the law of nations is a part of the common law of China". Then he was appointed a member of the codification commission attached to the Ministry of Justice in 1928 .
In the summer of the same year he rejoined the Provisional Court as presiding judge of the criminal division. He also published a volume containing all of his law review articles entitled "Essays and Juridical Studies" in 1928 . When Ho Shih-chen resigned the presidency of the Court in August 1929, he succeeded him as President but soon resigned in order to prepare his lectures to be delivered at Northwestern University law school, Chicago, as a holder of the Rosenthal Foundation Lectureship.
In the meantime Ching-hsiung Wu also accepted an invitation to join the faculty of Harvard law school as a research fellow for a year. Owing to the ill health of Mrs. Wu, he declined the invitation and returned to China in July, 1930. In 1931 he became Advisor on Municipal Affairs to the Shanghai Municipal Council. In September 1932 he was appointed Councillor of the Provisional Council of the City Government of Greater Shanghai.
In January 1933, he was appointed a member of the Legislative Yuan by the Central i Political Council upon recommendation of Sun Fo, President of the Yuan and was made vice-chairman of the Committee for drafting a permanent Constitution for China.
He was concurrently Chairman of Law Codification Committee of the Legislative Yuan and Kditor-in-Chief of the Sun Yat-sen Institute for the Advancement of Culture and Education at Nanking, China.