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0In 221 BCE, Qin unified China under an emperor and a centralized administration. More than a thousand years later, scholars in medieval Bologna were studying Roman legal texts that would help shape Europe's legal institutions. How did the ability to govern develop alongside the idea that rulers themselves should be bound by law?
The first episode of Reasoned Talk takes Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order as a starting point. Moving from Qin's statutes and administrative practices to Justinian's compilation, medieval jurists, and natural law, it examines the relationship between state power and legal limits. What gives law the authority to constrain the people who govern?
Hi, I'm Mason Hu, a lawyer in China. This is Reasoned Talk, a podcast about legal history in China and the West.
Terms and names
Francis Fukuyama — The political scientist whose comparative framework guides this episode. His three institutions are the state, the rule of law, and accountable government.
State capacity — The ability of public institutions to implement decisions. It concerns administrative effectiveness, which should be distinguished from the extent of a ruler's powers.
Rule of law — Used here in Fukuyama's sense of law binding rulers themselves. Possessing a written code is insufficient to establish it.
Accountable government — Government that must answer to the governed. Democratic elections are a major modern mechanism of accountability.
Qin The First Emperor (秦始皇) — The First Emperor of China, whose state completed the conquest of its six major rivals in 221 BCE.
Shang Yang (商鞅) — The fourth-century BCE reformer associated with 秦's military and administrative reforms.
Li Kui (李悝)；Canon of Laws《法经》 — The traditional attribution and Chinese title of the lost Canon of Laws. The account of its six chapters comes from later sources.
Lv (律) and Ling (令) — Commonly translated as statutes and ordinances. “Orders” is also used for 令.
《法律答问》 — Answers to Questions Concerning Qin Statutes. English translations of the title vary.
《封诊式》 — Models for Sealing and Investigating. A collection of procedural models, rather than a modern code of procedure.
廷行事 — Court practice, often discussed in connection with precedents. The term should not be taken to imply the modern common-law doctrine of binding precedent.
Corpus Iuris Civilis — The collective name for Justinian's legal compilation: the Institutes, Digest, Code, and Novels. Corpus Juris Civilis is an alternative spelling. The Code is one component of the collection.
Glossators — Medieval scholars who studied Roman legal texts through explanatory notes called glosses.
Canon law — The law of the Church; distinct from Roman civil law.
Thomas Aquinas; natural law — The thirteenth-century theologian connected human law with reason, the common good, and a Christian account of eternal law.
