Chinese law is one of the oldest legal traditions in the world, emerging from the intellectual ferment of the Warring States period, when two rival schools, Confucianism and Legalism, competed to define the proper role of law in governance. Confucianism held that law should be a subsidiary tool used mainly against wrongdoers immune to moral instruction, while Legalism advocated codified law and harsh punishment to achieve social order. These strands were fused in the Tang Code of 624 CE and carried forward into the later Great Qing Legal Code. Older Western scholarship, following Max Weber, dismissed the tradition's sophistication, a view modern scholarship has extensively criticized.
Facts
Origin Year624 CE marks the Tang Code, the clearest codification landmark of the mature imperial tradition; the tradition's philosophical roots in the Confucian-Legalist debate reach back centuries earlier into the Warring States period, and no single founding year exists for the tradition as a whole. Example JurisdictionsImperial China, Tang through Qing dynasties 1 Primary Source of LawComprehensive imperial dynastic codes blending Confucian moral hierarchy with Legalist codified punishment 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The modern Civil Code of the People's Republic of China follows the Germanic civil-law family rather than the traditional imperial Chinese legal tradition, marking a break from, not a continuation of, this system.
Sources
1. Chinese Law (Wikipedia)
Wikipediaarticle bodyQuote, article body
the codification of law was largely completed by the Tang Code of CE 624, throughout the centuries the Confucian foundations of the Tang Code were retained.
Civil Code of the People's Republic of China (Wikipedia)
WikipediaAssociated With: Civil Code of the People's Republic of China (2021), Foreign Influence sectionQuote, Associated With: Civil Code of the People's Republic of China (2021), Foreign Influence section
the legal system of the People's Republic of China is based on the older European legal system of Germanic civil law.
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