Criminalizing Job Performance
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5954562 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Liang Cai (0000-0001-5131-3048, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 85 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 5-31 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-03 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-9118 • E-ISSN: 1752-0401 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00219118-12040614 |
| OpenAlex | W4415828968 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 16 |
Shang Yang and Han Feizi advocated performance-based law and excessive punishments, which they believed would prevent people from deceiving the lord and violating the law, thereby creating a crime-free utopia. However, by examining the archaeologically excavated materials and the transmitted sources, the author demonstrates that this brutal instrumentalism and idealism generated a monstrous legal system in real politics that distorted justice. The author argues that the Qin-Han legal system excessively punished administrative mistakes as crimes. Intended to promote efficiency, performance-oriented legislation prescribed rigid, detailed, and high-standard job objectives with absolute liability. A large number of officials, including those industriously devoted to their jobs, violated the law. Excessive punishments caused officials guilty of administrative errors to suffer the same bodily pain and economic loss as those who inflicted serious harm on society through intentional violence. When the punishment was neither deserved nor just, resentment arose against the law, and sympathy for the condemned emerged. This unjust practice triggered heated criticism among scholars, officials, and sometimes emperors, but no efficient legal reforms ever occurred. This article is intended to provoke thought about the dangerous application of perfectionism in the real world and to explain historical roots of the long-standing Confucian tradition against rule by law
Criticism · Harm · Idealism · Instrumentalism · Politics · Punishment (psychology) · Resentment · Sympathy · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Chinese history and philosophy · Environmental and Cultural Studies in Latin America and Beyond
Arguing about Law
The Legal Concept of Zhi 直 the Emphasis of Verification in Early China
Remnants of Ch'in Law
Han Fei's Doctrine of Self-interest
The Debate over Coercive Rulership and the "Human Way" in Light of Recently Excavated Warring States Texts
Research on Policy Implementation
Evidence for Qin Law in the Qianling County Archive
The Criminal Body and the Body Politic
The pragmatics of standardization
| Highly cited | No |
|---|