Abstract: Long-pending legal cases had clearly become a serious social problem in the late Qing dynasty. The backlog of legal cases was not only a burden for those engaged in litigation, it also increased social unrest. Furthermore, for China’s feudal rulers, the increasingly serious problem of long-pending legal cases was a manifestation of the outbreak of a serious crisis in the late Qing legal system. The reasons for the backlog of legal cases were many. Although late Qing rulers had initiated a systematic reform of the legal system, under a corrupt social system, the effort to eliminate long-pending cases was in vain, and the effort to obtain“simplified administration and clear punishments”in the end was an illusion.