A Probe Into The Privilege Of Scholars From The Perspective Of The Legal System In The Song Dynasty

This paper tries to answer the following three questions: first,the reason why the Song court gave scholars legal privileges;second,the process of the legal privileges that scholars,especially scholars,obtained in the Song Dynasty;third,the concrete manifestation of the law of the legal privileges that scholars obtained in the Song Dynasty.Firstly,this paper tries to observe the ideological,political and social background of Song Dynasty.The Song Dynasty,which was founded in the background of the rampant generals in the late Tang and the Five Dynasties,established the policy of "governing the world with scholar-bureaucrats" from the very beginning.Giving privileges to bureaucrats and nobles is the embodiment of the Confucian thought of "entering the law with courtesy".Zhuxi and other Neo-Confucianists emphasize that the order of superiority and inferiority is in line with Confucianism.With the maturity and development of the imperial examination system in the Song Dynasty,scholars became the main source of officials in the Song Dynasty.They were the main enactors and amenders of the laws in the Song Dynasty.Secondly,thispaper selected several topics to examine the legal privileges of scholar-bureaucrats.As far as the privilege of exempting scholar-officials from death was concerned,it was not clear in the early Northern Song Dynasty.In the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty,with the growth of the scholar-officials group,they formed the consciousness of their own class,paid attention to avoiding self-mutilation in political struggle,and then proposed amending the sentencing standards of certain charges and adjusting judicial procedures,etc.,and created public opinion to regard the plan of killing scholar-officials' rights and interests as "ancestral law".In front of the relatively united group of scholar-bureaucrats,the emperor always made concessions and finally confirmed the demands of the scholar-bureaucrats.Finally,when discussing the legal privileges of scholars,especially scholar-bureaucrats,this paper always pays attention to comparing them with other classes or groups.In the Song Dynasty,the lighter the criminal law was,the stricter the criminal law was.In the judicial process,civil officials enjoyed more privileges than military officers.In the case of committing the same crime of corruption,the punishment for officials was much higher than that for officials.Undergraduates,especially Tai students,also enjoyed higher legal privileges than ordinary people and were local officials.Doctors also leniently punish students outside the law,often replacing punishment with school rules.