神明裁判是古代司法證據制度不發達的產物,當司法官員對于原、被告雙方的是非曲直難以判明時,便借助于神意來裁判。神明裁判是一種非理性的審判方式,是基于人們對原始宗教的崇拜和對自然界的無知認識而產生的。中日兩國在古代法制文明初期,都有過占卜裁判的情況,后來隨著兩國律令法體系的建立,有效地解決了疑難案件證據不足的問題,使神明裁判失去了存在的空間。從公元13世紀以后,隨著中國古代專制主義中央集權的加強和日本幕府統治的確立,儒家"無訟是求"的觀念和日本法律處于秘密的狀態,嚴重制約了訴訟審判制度的發展,中日兩國幾乎同時出現了神明裁判復活的跡象。

The trial by ordeal is the product of lacking judicial evidence system. When the judicial officers cannot make judgments on the rights and wrongs between plaintiff and defendant they would refer to God’s standards to make decisions. Obviously the trial by ordeal is an irrational method which can be attributed to people’s ignorance on natural and the blind adoration of primitive religion. In the early stage of ancient Chinese and ancient Japanese legal civilization,making the judgment based on divination had once appeared. With establishment and development of laws and decrees of these two countries,the problem of lacking evidence on complicated cases was solved,leaving no space for the trial by ordeal. However since the 13 thcentury,with the establishment of ancient Chinese centralized autocratic government and Japanese Shogunate,Confucianism’s "aiming at no lawsuit"was highly recommended,meanwhile Japanese law disappeared. These social phenomena seriously restricted the development of civil trail proceeding. The Trial by ordeal resurged nearly at the same time in these two countries.