Geoffrey MacCormack,
Aberdeen: The Legalist School and its Influence upon Traditional Chinese Law
Abstract: The Legalists were
a group of statesmen and writers in China (mainly fourth and third centuries
BC) who advocated in their practice and writings the use of law as the
principal instrument of government. They understood law in the Austinian sense
of orders, stipulating punishments or rewards, issued by the ruler to his
subjects. Emphasis was placed upon the fact that punishments should be severe
and deterrent, that official should be accountable under the law for the
correct performance of their duties, that laws should be clear and certain, and
that there should be a strict separation between law and morality, in the sense
that law should take no account of moral desiderata but should itself furnish
the sole source of what was right conduct. Although the great imperial codes
from the T’ang to the Ch’ing (eighth to twentieth centuries)
enshrined the basic values of Confucian orthodoxy, they were also strongly
influenced, especially in their technical construction and the specification of
officials’ duties, by Legalist doctrines.