Studies reveal that unlike Chinese and Southeast Asian villages during feudal time, the Vietnamese villages and communes applied a stricter self-rule regime with a fairly large scope covering various aspects of the community life, such as production organization (primarily irrigation), relations between different social strata, security protection, management of public property, public land division, learning promotion, social relief, organization of cultural and spiritual activities, and the implementation of tax and conscription duties.

The procedural law and regulations in Vietnam during the 15th and 19 centuries were prescribed fairly comprehensively and specifically in “Quoc Trieu Hinh Luat” (the National Criminal Code) of the late Le dynasty and “Hoang Viet Luat Le” (the Royal Laws and Regulations of Vietnam) under the Nguyen dynasty. They were also codified into “Quoc Trieu Kham Tung Dieu Le” (the National Procedural Regulations of Royal Dynasties), which was really a distinctive legal phenomenon of the Vietnamese feudal laws.