Legalism

Examples of Legalism in the following topics:

• Chinese Philosophy

  • Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism, and Mohism all began during the Zhou Dynasty in the 6th century BCE, and had very strong influences on Chinese civilization.
  • Although Confucianism and Daoism are the Chinese philosophies that have endured most to this day, even more important to this early period was a lesser-known philosophy called Legalism.
  • According to Legalism, the state was far more important than the individual.
  • While Legalism held that laws should be clear and public and that everyone should be subject to them, it also contended that rulers had supreme power and must use stealth and secrecy to remain in power.
  • Legalism was generally in competition with Confucianism, which advocated a just and reciprocal relationship between the state and its subjects.

• The Manor System

  • The manor system was an element of feudal society in the Middle Ages characterized by the legal and economic power of the lord of a manor.
  • Manorialism was characterized by the vesting of legal and economic power in the lord of a manor.
  • The manor formed the basic unit of feudal society, and the lord of a manor and his serfs were bound legally, economically, and socially.
  • Villeins had more rights and a higher status than the lowest serf, but existed under a number of legal restrictions that differentiated them from freemen.
  • Landlords, even where legally entitled to do so, rarely evicted villeins, because of the value of their labour.

• Early Roman Society

  • The adult male head of a household had special legal powers and privileges that gave him jurisdiction over all the members of his family, including his wife, adult sons, adult married daughters, and slaves, but there were multiple, overlapping hierarchies at play within society at large.
  • Citizenship in ancient Rome afforded political and legal privileges to free individuals with respect to laws, property, and governance.
  • Additionally, the phrase ex duobus civibus Romanis natos, translated to mean “children born of two Roman citizens”, reinforces the importance of both parents’ legal status in determining that of their offspring.
  • Classes of non-citizens existed and held different legal rights.
  • Because it was defined mainly in terms of a lack of legal rights and status, it was also not considered a permanent or inescapable position.

• Women in Pre-Islamic Arabia

  • Women had almost no legal status under tribal law in pre-Islamic Arabia.
  • Under the customary tribal law existing in Arabia at the advent of Islam, as a general rule women had virtually no legal status.
  • For example, in Saudi Arabia it is mandatory for women to wear the hijab, while in Afghanistan it is very common but not legally required by the state.
  • Under the customary tribal law existing in Arabia before the rise of Islam, as a general rule women had virtually no legal status; fathers sold their daughters into marriage for a price, the husband could terminate the union at will, and women had little or no property or succession rights.

• Natural Rights

  • Natural rights are usually juxtaposed with the concept of legal rights.
  • Legal rights are those bestowed onto a person by a given legal system (i.e., rights that can be modified, repealed, and restrained by human laws).
  • The question of the relation between natural and legal rights, therefore, is often an aspect of social contract theory.
  • Thus, people form an implicit social contract, ceding their natural rights to the authority to protect the people from abuse, and living henceforth under the legal rights of that authority.
  • Any contract that tried to legally alienate such a right would be inherently invalid.

• The Justinian Code

  • Fragments were taken out of various legal treatises and opinions and inserted in the Digesta.
  • Its influence on common law legal systems has been much smaller, although some basic concepts from the Corpus have survived through Norman law - such as the contrast, especially in the Institutes, between "law" (statute) and custom.
  • Its four parts thus constitute the foundation documents of the Western legal tradition.

• The Sun-King and Authoritarianism

  • Throughout his reign, Louis XIV, known as the Sun King, consolidated royal power and centralized the state by financial, administrative, and legal reforms as well as by a sophisticated system of controlling the French aristocracy.
  • In 1651, when Louis XIV officially came of age, Anne's regency legally ended.
  • Louis also attempted to uniform regulation of civil procedure throughout legally irregular France by issuing a comprehensive legal code, the 'Grande Ordonnance de Procédure Civile' of 1667, also known as the Code Louis.
  • The Code Louis played an important part in French legal history as the basis for the Napoleonic code, itself the origin of many modern legal codes.

• Yaroslav the Wise

  • Yaroslav I, also known as Yaroslav the Wise, developed the first legal codes, beautified Kievan Rus', and formed major political alliances with the West during his nearly 40-year reign.
  • He also created some of the first legal codes in Kievan Rus'.
  • These first steps also most likely led to the first legal code in Kievan Rus' under Yaroslav.
  • This initial legal code would live on and be refined into the Russkaya Pravda in the 12th century.

• Justinian and Theodora

  • Emperor Justinian was responsible for substantial expansion, a legal code, and the Hagia Sophia but suffered defeats against the Persians.
  • Emperor Justinian's most important contribution, perhaps, was a unified Roman legal code.
  • The Romans had attempted to systematize the legal code in the fifth century but had not completed the effort.
  • The impact of a more unified legal code and military conflicts was the increased ability for the Byzantine Empire to establish trade and improve their economic standing.
  • Theodora participated in Justinian's legal and spiritual reforms, and her involvement in the increase of the rights of women was substantial.

• Louis XIV and the Huguenots

  • The persecution of the Huguenots became one of the critical factors in Louis XIV's consolidation of royal power and resulted in Catholicism being the only legally tolerated religion in France, despite Louis' conflict with the Pope.
  • Although this was within his legal rights, this policy (known as dragonnades) inflicted severe financial strain and atrocious abuse on Protestants.
  • The revocation of the Edict of Nantes created a state of affairs in France similar to that of nearly every other European country of the period (with the brief exception of Great Britain and possibly the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), where only the majority state religion was legally tolerated.