. The article attempts to show the way in which the notions of “natural law” and “cosmic harmony” have been applied by Western scholars in the interpretation of traditional Chinese thinking about the role of law in society, the extent to which the Western interpretations can be supported by the Chinese sources, and , more specifically, the degree to which official Chinese thought subscribed to a correlation between the occurrence of natural disasters and acts of maladministration or injustice on the (...) part of the emperor and state. Generally it is argued that the extent to which Chinese statesmen and administrators actually believed that errors in the infliction of legal punishment or the sentencing of offenders would produce aberrant natural phenomena has been exaggerated by Western scholars. (shrink)

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. (shrink)