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Notice something? These are all from the Han Dynasty or later. Qin gets portrayed as a sort of bronze age North Korea (especially by Han writers - just fancy that), but actually its legal system was surprisingly woke and frequently far more lenient than what followed... https://twitter.com/WorldofChinese/status/1288761250290135040
For one thing, they tended not to see crime as a moral failing, but just as something that anyone would do if the incentives were right. This robbed legal proceedings of much of the hysterical outrage inherent in them even today.
Secondly, while the central authorities did not trust their citizens, they trusted their bureaucrats even less. The result was that the burden of proof was high and the appeals process strictly upheld...
If a peasant got away with stealing a pig, that was pretty bad, but if a bureaucrat used his powers of reward and punishment to build up a little local empire for himself, that was a threat to the state. Advantage: peasant.
You see a similar phenomenon in modern China, where ordinary people tend to be fonder of central government than of the local variety, because the former is seen as protecting them from exploitation and arbitrary treatment by the latter.
Also, much as in modern China, political justice should be considered separately from "civilian' justice. If you willingly embarked on a political career and ended up torn to pieces in the marketplace, you couldn't complain too loudly because at that point it was all in the game.
This worked in 300 BC and in 2020 AD because in both cases the authorities had a level of control over the system that seldom prevailed in between times.
Throughout much of the imperial era, there was no guarantee that they'd be able to pick up on many of the crimes taking place, so those that they *did* spot had to be punished with huge fanfare if any sort of dissuasion was to be achieved.
