China's Legalists


Book Description

This study focuses on the Legalists, an ancient school of Chinese philosophy, which perfected the science of government and art of statecraft. It gives an insight into the style of the Legalists' discourse and its impact on Chinese institutions and practices.




China's Legalists: The Early Totalitarians


Book Description

This text discusses the Chinese Legalists, an ancient school of Chinese philosophy which flourished during the Period of the Hundred Contending Schools (6th-3rd century B.C.E.) The school perfected the science of government and art of statecraft to a level that would have greatly impressed Machiavelli. This period and its personalities, as well as a taste of the style and spirit of the Legalists' discourse, are made accessible to the student and general reader, placing into focus the roots of the great Chinese philosophy-as-statecraft tradition. The Legalists - most famously Li Kui, Shang Yang, Shen Buhai, Shen Dao, and Han Fei - had a great impact not only on the institutions and practices of Chinese imperial tradition but also on the Maoist totalitarianism of the People's Republic of China.




The Confucian-legalist State


Book Description

The Confucian-Legalist State proposes a new theory of social change and, in doing so, analyzes the patterns of Chinese history, such as the rise and persistence of a unified empire, the continuous domination of Confucianism, and China's inability to develop industrial capitalism without Western imperialism.




Inside China's Legal System


Book Description

China’s legal system is vast and complex, and robust scholarship on the subject is difficult to obtain. Inside China’s Legal System provides readers with a comprehensive look at the system including how it works in practice, theoretical and historical underpinnings, and how it might evolve. The first section of the book explains the Communist Party’s utilitarian approach to law: rule by law. The second section discusses Confucian and Legalist views on morality, law and punishment, and the influence such traditional Chinese thinking has on contemporary Chinese law. The third section focuses on the roles of key players (including judges, prosecutors, lawyers, and legal academics) in the Chinese legal system. The fourth section offers Chinese legal case studies in civil, criminal, administrative, and international law. The book concludes with a comparison of China’s fundamental governing and legal principles with those of the United States, in such areas as checks and balances, separation of powers, and due process. Uses extensive legal materials and historical documents generally unavailable to Western based academics Gives insider knowledge, including first-hand experience teaching law, and close involvement with judges, attorneys, and law professors in China Analyses legal issues from historical and cultural perspectives holistically




The Book of Lord Shang


Book Description




Legal Orientalism


Book Description

Since the Cold War ended, China has become a global symbol of disregard for human rights, while the United States has positioned itself as the world’s chief exporter of the rule of law. How did lawlessness become an axiom about Chineseness rather than a fact needing to be verified empirically, and how did the United States assume the mantle of law’s universal appeal? In a series of wide-ranging inquiries, Teemu Ruskola investigates the history of “legal Orientalism”: a set of globally circulating narratives about what law is and who has it. For example, why is China said not to have a history of corporate law, as a way of explaining its “failure” to develop capitalism on its own? Ruskola shows how a European tradition of philosophical prejudices about Chinese law developed into a distinctively American ideology of empire, influential to this day. The first Sino-U.S. treaty in 1844 authorized the extraterritorial application of American law in a putatively lawless China. A kind of legal imperialism, this practice long predated U.S. territorial colonialism after the Spanish-American War in 1898, and found its fullest expression in an American district court’s jurisdiction over the “District of China.” With urgent contemporary implications, legal Orientalism lives on in the enduring damage wrought on the U.S. Constitution by late nineteenth-century anti-Chinese immigration laws, and in the self-Orientalizing reforms of Chinese law today. In the global politics of trade and human rights, legal Orientalism continues to shape modern subjectivities, institutions, and geopolitics in powerful and unacknowledged ways.




Law Codes in Dynastic China


Book Description

In telling the story of Law Codes in Dynastic China, John Head and Yanping Wang offer a bird's eye view of Chinese legal history from the earliest dynasties to the last. They survey the majestic sweep of China's legal tradition by allowing the details to emerge from the works of many scholars and then connecting those details in a storyline that revolves around a unifying theme: legal codification. In this way, Law Codes in Dynastic China brings to life such characters as the Duke of Zhou, Confucius, Khubilai Khan, and dozens of other emperors, rebels, scholars, and eunuchs. The book also illuminates the great movements and philosophies of China -- Imperial Confucianism, Legalism, correlative cosmology, Daoism, and others -- all in order to reveal both the spirit and the practicalities of law in dynastic China. This new one-volume text will prove valuable not only for researchers in the areas of Chinese law, legal history, and Chinese history, but also for students in a variety of undergraduate and graduate programs and for legal practitioners whose work calls for them to have a historically-based understanding of China's legal culture. For all readers, the book provides comprehensive citation to authorities and sources for further study -- with special emphasis on recent findings and translations. Moreover, for the general lay reader, the book offers a fascinating look at the intersection of three paths of literature and learning: law, history, and China. In doing so, it facilitates a broader appreciation of contemporary China as well. "I have never enjoyed reading a book of History so much since Terry Jones' The Crusades. However, it is also a serious book. Despite the breaktaking speed with which the authors drag the reader through the highs and lows of Dynastic China, the authors are careful in their presentation and are faithful to the sources... a useful sourcebook for researchers as well as an entertaining read." -- Law & Politics Book Review




An Introduction to Hanfei's Political Philosophy


Book Description

This is the first book to make the philosophy of Hanfei available at an introductory level. This fascinating thinker not only directly influenced the first Chinese Empire, but also embodied the strongest alternative to Confucianism in Chinese thought. Even today, his thinking influences China. It introduces key concepts and arguments in Hanfei’s legalist philosophy. It also contextualizes this thinking within Chinese history and in a comparative approach. The book will appeal to a wide audience interested in Chinese political philosophy, as well as to historians, social and political scientists.




Law and Morality in Ancient China


Book Description

Huang-Lao thought, a unique and sophisticated political philosophy which combines elements of Daoism and Legalism, dominated the intellectual life of late Warring States and Early Han China, providing the ideological foundation for post-Qin reforms. In the absence of extant texts, however, scholars of classical Chinese philosophy remained in the dark about this important school for over 2000 years. Finally, in 1973, archaeologists unearthed four ancient silk scrolls: the Silk Manuscripts of Huang-Lao. This work is the first detailed, book-length treatment in English of these lost treasures.




China’s Imperial Past


Book Description

A panoramic survey of the course of Chinese civilization from prehistory to 1850, when the old China began to give way