The Tang Code: A Perfect Unity of Legislative Technique and the Idea of Justice

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Zhang Sheng

Although the Tang Code was inherited from the Sui Dynasty, it embodied the idea of justice of Tang Dynasty through the application of more mature legislative techniques. Through the technique of typification, legislators in Tang Dynasty merged many similar items into one single provision and, through such techniques as omission, citation, and mathematical logic, expressed various criminal law norms with minimum number of words and sentences. Through the analysis of legislative techniques, this article shows that the Tang Code was first of all an independent system of criminal law norms that imposed fair and just punishments on various crimes.Meanwhile, the Tang Code also symbolized “the idea of justice” of the whole legal system by imposing just punishments on acts of violation of state laws and regulations in accordance with law. The 500 articles in the Tang Code were deliberately designed by legislators to realize the unity of concrete norms, the legal system and the idea of justice through mature legislative techniques.