The Roman and the Han Empire
faced many of the same problems that we now face today. Each empire
had about 50 million people. The Han government relied more on day
to day governance than the Romans or Greeks. The Roman and Greeks
spent much more time debating issues rather than making decisions.
Xiao-He wrote the Nine Chapters, the basis of Chinese law, that covered
almost every type of legal situation that could arise. There were
906 volumes under more than 60 separate headings that dealt with many of
the same things that is currently being debated throughout the world.
The legal spirit of the Han dynasty was
the fullest under Prime Minister Dong Zhongshu, a Confucianism who served
during the reign of emperor Wu-Di. Under Dong, every legal decision
or ruling had to be accompanied by an explanation that explained why the
decision was made and under what law the ruling was based on. According
to Hsing Yi-tien, a researcher at the History and Philology at the Academia
Sinica, the concept of human rights appeared in the Han Dynasty laws far
earlier than in Roman Law. Before the Han Dynasty, people were thought
of as “state resources” in China whose only purpose was to help the state.
In the famous Qi Theory, people are equated to animal: “Easy to get along
with when things are good, fighting when angered, taking advantage of every
chance for gain, and running away to avoid harm”. During the rule of
Zhang Di of Eastern Han, confusions believed that parents did not have the
right to take a child's life. Chinese belief was that heaven decided
the matters of human life and death could date back to this time. During
the rule of Wu Di, Dong Zhongshu suggested that masters not be able to kill
their slaves at will. This idea took root and remained in China.
Hsing Yi-tien says that emperor Guangwu of Eastern Han placed a high value
on all human life. Similar Roman law was not introduced until Christianity
was the main religion, nearly 400 hears after the Chinese implemented it.
Another Han law that is strikingly similar to current laws is from
a piece of bamboo found in Juyan. This piece says that government
officials did not have the right to go into a citizen’s house and make
an arrest unless they had “due cause”. This is similar to the “probable
cause” article in the Bill of Rights. The idea of Xuan Di was that
law was primarily to protect human life. He then used this to say
that once a person was dead, that they could not be brought back and therefore
it was better to error on the side of leniency than to kill an innocent
person. This idea is the argument against the death penalty today.
The Chinese, especially the Han Dynasty,
is responsible for more legal precedents than we give the credit for.
Much of this credit goes to the Roman Empire, which may have used the
same ideas, but hundreds of years after the Chinese came up with the exact
same laws.. While the Romans may have had some of the same ideas,
the Han Dynasty was implementing these ideas long before the Romans were.
click for Han Empire timeline
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