The Confucianization of Law and Its Explanation

In the backgrounds of the knowledge of legal history in modern times, Qu Tongzu used the Confucianization of law to describe the development of Chinese penal statutes. It explains the phenomenon of introducing rites into laws which started from the Han Dynasty and thrived in Wei and Jin. The basis of the theory is that rites separated from laws in the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods, after morality, rites, politics and penalties separated from Zhou Rites, the rites could be integrated into laws. The Confucianization of law can correctly explain the development of penal laws after the midterm of the Western Han Dynasty. However, as the theory of Confucianization of law includes conflicts with the power of the Emperor, it can only explain the development of the penal laws to an extend. In the view of penal laws and its practice, the confucianization of the judicial practice developed not so deep as that of penal laws, since the judicial system returned to utilize the practice of legalism after it had experienced the process of confucianization of law. Besides, even in the penal laws there existed the theory of legalism, which can be explained by the process of the integration of Confucianism and Legalism or the integration of rites and laws.