Curiosities: Ancient Chinese law
International law as we know it today is based on European and Western legal regimes. However, there are extremely rich and complex legal regimes, often unknown by jurists and scholars of international law. Chinese law, for example, is a very rich and peculiar regimental model. In this text we will talk a little about its millenary origin.
It was in the Zhou empire (1122 - 222 BC), that we can glimpse the birth of a de facto"Chinese law". Ancient Chinese law was based on two central ideas, li (礼) and fa (法). The li was an abstract concept based on Confucian philosophy, this ideogram cannot be used as an objective translation of something specific, it expresses the idea of "ritual", "custom", "morality", "good behaviour" and "etiquette". In the Zhou period, li became strongly politically motivated. It was during the Zhou period that the Chinese political institutions began to emerge. There were four main ministries: war, justice, land and state. A politician named Zhou Gong proposed the creation of a system of rules based on li, to maintain social control.
So for many centuries li followed as a code of conduct to be followed, there were no written laws. Customs, morals, law and religion were united. li also worked as a penal system, there were penalties for those who did not comply with li, these penalties were called xing. The xings could be applied either to solve simple financial issues or to condemn an individual to death. The penalties varied in intensity, ranging from the mutilation of fingers, toes, and facial parts, to castration and death. There were also punishments for rebellious vassal kingdoms, which were sentenced to war! Thus, we can see that the concept of li was very broad, and even encompassed an archaic notion of the law of war. Later the xing was replaced by the fa, which was a separation from the li. The fa was the first model of an archaic Chinese penal system, and came into force separately from li.
Luiz Leandro Garcia
Post-graduate student in International Law at the Faculty CEDIN
