History of Law: The Tang Code

The Tang Code was a penal set of rules that was established and used during the Tang Dynasty in China. The Code fused the Legalist and Confucian interpretations of law and it was composed of 12 sections containing more than 500 articles. Supplemented by civil statutes and regulations, it became the basis for later dynastic codes not only in China but in East Asia as well. Considered as one of the supreme achievements of traditional Chinese law, the Tang Code is also the earliest Chinese Code to have been transmitted to the present in its entire form.

The Tang code took its roots in the code of the Northern Zhou dynasty, which was itself based on the earlier codes of the Cao-Wei and Western Jin. With the goal to soften the character of the earlier laws and reduce physical punishments, and in order to conciliate social tensions in the newly pacified Tang territories, the Code was created in AD 624 at the request of Emperor Gaozu of Tang. It contained more than 500 articles divided into twelve large sections

As a general idea The offence in the code modulated according to the degree of social relation determined the final penalty which could range from flagellation using a rattan and bastinado with a bamboo stick, to penal labor and death by strangulation or decapitation. The local magistrate acted in the Tang code as examiner and sometimes as investigator, but his final role in legal cases was to establish the appropriate penalty for the offense that had been committed.