Law and Political Power Structure: Justice in Early Imperial China and Rome

Abstract

Law and politics are closely related. The differences and changes in political factors have direct and profound impacts on law. As a fundamental political element, the political power structure basically has two typical forms, namely, a centralized system and a decentralized system. A centralized system means concentration of political power in both horizontal and vertical dimensions: horizontally, power is held in the hands of chief officials, while vertically, in the central government. By contrast, in a decentralized system, power is dispersed in a manner of pluralism in both dimensions. Through an empirical study of the history of early imperial law, this article compares the different facets of the judicial process that were under the influence of these two typical forms of power structure in ancient societies, tests the thesis in various forms, and thus explains the close relationship between law and politics. The Chinese Qin-Han and Roman Empires co-existed and developed in parallel at the two ends of the Eurasia continent, leaving remarkable legacies on human civilizations, including political and legal systems. Meanwhile, the Roman regime, especially during its imperial period, covers a vast territory comparable to that of early imperial China and shares similarities in terms of size, population, and level of economic development. Therefore, these two systems are ideally comparable in the analysis of causation between politics and law as it is easier to control variables by excluding potential influences from factors other than the political system, which is presumably a key variable in this study.