On The Criminal Law Of Northern Wei Dynasty

The Northern Wei Dynasty was the first ethnic minority regime in Chinese history to establish unified dynasty in the Central Plains.Its legal construction was groundbreaking.Not only showed the difference between nomadic civilization and agricultural civilization,but also reflected the transformation on the Han civilization.It was very distinctive.The Northern Wei Dynasty was originally nomads.The unique living environment and economic category that were different from those of farming people created their unique customs of worship,funeral and marriage.Sacrifice God with cattle and sheep.Funeral burial with carriage and horses,singing and dancing.Marriage was autonomy,marriage custom was simple,and it was popular to marry with later mother or scorpions.In life,there was no humble esteem,and they valued the young?disparaged the old.The political leaders were created by democratic elections,which led to the worship of the leaders.Simple economic structure shaped the herdsman's relatively single spiritual world.Therefore,rough laws could meet the need.Thence,the initial statute law only stipulated several basic crimes.Including rebellion crimes,homicide,theft and so on.The justice system was also simple.The military and administrative chiefs Si Bu Da Ren assumed judicial functions.There were no complicated procedural requirements and no completed judicial process.The trial process was brief and quick.Judgment results required immediate execution.When the Northern Wei Dynasty moved from the grassland to the Central Plains,establishing a unified dynasty,the rule area expanded,the production environment changed,and the population structure became complicated.The primitive laws were not sufficient to satisfy the demand.In the face of these new problems that need to be resolved,the rulers paied attention to actively enlisting Han scholars from the Central Plains in the newly ruled regions.With the help of the scholars,the Northern WeiDynasty adopted the Law,Confucian,and Taoist ideas to rule the country.Xianbei fighted for survival,with a strong image and a small number of people.This required that its regime had a strong and authoritarian nature.The legalist doctrine was just enough to meet the need of a centralised and respected king.At the same time,the rulers also advocated the quiet and innocent study of Taoist,trying to maintain the original folk customs,so that the aristocracy could abandon the pursuit of power.For Confucians who have ruled China for thousands of years,the rulers were also happy to adopt them.The Confucian universal unification thought was just enough to satisfy the desire of the rulers to rush to get rid of the clan's social military democracy,and the desire of the people of the North for centuries of divided wars to aspire to unification.Under the Combination of several ideas?they established the law ideology of reenacting punishments and taking severe punishments and diminishing rituals in the early stages.Under the guidance of this concept of legislation,Tian Xing and Shen Jia law had basically applied heavy punishment to the people.Zheng Ping law had established a new criminal name system.The law of Taian had increased the number of crimes committed by bureaucrats.And later they changed to a combination of courtesy and law.Tai He law began to be fully Confucianized,for example,by canceling the dual responsibility system for adopting children,and by reforming the marginal punishment and limiting death.The Zheng Shi law was further advanced in the depth and breadth in legal Confucianism.Why did the Northern Wei Dynasty criminal law absorb the Han legal system?Because of the demand for power from decentralization to centralization,and the institutional appeal from the tribe to the dynasty.In the early days of the establishment of the dynasty,the demand for centralization was particularly strong.In order to establish political authority,the new-born regime established the crime of rebellion to punish the crimes of infringement of the rule,and completely abandoned filial piety for authoritarianism.Absence of implicit system,admittedly there were reasons that Xianbei patriarchal concept was weak,but it was more attributed to that the early legal system should serve the emperor.After the reform of generations of emperors,the centralized and authoritarian system was firmly established.In the period of Xuanwu Emperor,he began to incorporate the implicit system of the Han legal system into law.From the tribe to the dynasty,it was also a process from nomadic to farming.After governing the farming area,the environment and population had undergone tremendous changes,and the difficulty of rule had increased dramatically.The stage of "penalty bans" had gone.In order to achieve effective rule,they must gradually establish a complete legal system and judicial system.Therefore,the situation in which the four chiefs of military chiefs were concurrently serving as judicial officers was ended,and the time when the chief officer of Sandu,whose functions were diversified,served as a judicial officer was ended,and the establishment of a special judicial institution,the third official of the court,was completed.The full-time judiciary,from name to establishment,was derived from the Han legal system.With regard to the penalty system,the death penalty was gradually regulated as being twisted,smashed,etc.The felony punishment had become the statutory punishment,the labor punishment had become more standardized,the whip stick has been promoted into the main penalty,and the property had been sentenced to the auxiliary penalty.The Criminal Law of Northern Wei subsequent to the inheritance and development after absorbing Han legal system.In the content of the criminal code,Shen Jia law had already followed the example of the establishment of the Han legal name for "Criminal Name Law","Robbery Law" and "The Law of Arrest." During the Tai He period,it was possible to add "Fight Law," "Marriage Law," and "Bribe Law." Gradually established the style of twenty articles and laied the foundation for the style of the twelve articles of Northern Qi Law.With respect to the content of legislation,the crime of "inappropriateness" had added new connotations.In addition to inheriting Han's rebellion,etc.The crime of violating the patriarchal ethic,such as the marriage of the same surname,naked one's wife in front of his child and raped his wife's sister in front of his wife's mother,were included in the crime of"inappropriateness",so the content were expanded.This was the result of the introduction ceremony to the law.In order to establish a patriarchal society and maintain the family ethical order,the Northern Wei Dynasty studied the Han system and established the crime of unfilial piety.The homicide was performed at the place of the kinsman,and the ordinary unfilial acts were executed.At the same time,the expansion of the crime of unfilial piety,bereavement and fun was found to be a punishment for unfilial behavior.In order to establish a comprehensive ethic ideology for filial piety,and establish and expand the crime of unfilial piety,the Northern Wei Dynasty created a new law for filial parents andgrandparents.For grandparents and parents over 70 years of age,old diseases should be treated,no adult children and grandchildren,no death penalty for the pro-capable family,and probation for the confiscation of the prisoners.The establishment of the crime of unfllial piety and the law of new founding and cultivation were the deepening of the farming culture and inherited by the Tang Law.In terms of the judicial system,the prison sentence based on Confucian classics was a manifestation of Law Confucianization.The emperor order the officials of the Central Provincial School who were familiar with the Confucian classics used"Jingyi" to determine the difficult cases.Under the upsurge of the uplifting rituals initiated by the reform of Xiaowen Emperor,the accusation of the genre became more intense.In the discussion of many cases,both sides cited the rectification of their own claims.Even if it was not a specific case,the courtiers would point out that some laws had violated Confucian classics and require amendments.The prison sentence based on Confucian classics had prompted Confucianism to further infiltrate into the legislation and judicature of the Northern Wei Dynasty,inspiring Northern Zhou to formulate laws comprehensively and systematically based on the Confucian classic Zhou Li.The Northern Wei Dynasty had also gradually established a torture system,including the number of torture,the standard of torture equipment,the conditions for the use of torture instruments,and the preconditions for prisoners in prison.It was stipulated in a special "Prison Detention Order".The provisions of torture and torture were more systematic.Afterwards,the Northern Qi Dynasty,Northern Zhou andTang Dynasty were successively inherited.Northern Wei transformed the tribal customary law,took advantage of the Han system to construct a more specific death penalty repertoire system,for the first time formally protected the right to life and death in the form of procedural law,made original ideas on the ancient judicial trial system,and became a death sentence in Sui and Tang dynasties.In the case of joint crimes,the principle of punishment for accomplices who inherited the law of Qin in the early Han Dynasty was punished similarly to the first law,but it was extremely unstable.Although Jin law has a definition of "creative intention," it did not distinguish between first and second punishment.During the Northern Wei period,it was first legislated into a culture.There was a lot of controversy about the criteria for the completion of prison litigation.Whether or not a prison case was related to the issue of whether the prison case had been concluded and whether it could be appealed was a very important issue.The Northern Wei Dynasty finally established a set of rules that stipulated that the original verdict could be appealed if the facts of the crime or the applicable legal provisions were found to be erroneous.The review of the appeal was in progress and the case could be confiscated on the premise of maintaining the original verdict.The evidence at the review was clear.In accordance with reasonable circumstances,they should be rehabilitated and had not yet completed the formalities for the examination,the decree of embarrassment,and the cases where the main witnesses were in the case of a case that was in the process of reconsideration.It provided a unified basis and clear method for the determination and review of appeal cases.Tang law absorbed the relevant provisions of the Northern Wei law.The Northern Wei Dynasty took the legal system of the Han and developed it further,forming a systematic legal system.The reason why it could do so was that it was internal coordinated with the Confucianism and the Legalism.It comprehensively absorbed Confucianism and Legalism,establishing the legal ideas of rewards and punishments,etiquette,and governing the people by virtue,thereby establishing a legal system,and finally establishing the orthodox status of the Northern Wei Dynasty criminal law in Chinese Legal System.