Carrying out of Punishments Under the T’ang Dynasty Criminal Law

Abstract

Every legal system includes, as one of its main elements, a system of the implementation of sentences issued by the courts. However, the administration of punishments is always connected with violence against people, and sometimes even with their execution. The extent to which such violence was restricted so as to be acceptable to the collective sense of justice is an eloquent characteristic of the very concepts of justice inherent in culture as a whole. This article uses the example of the Chinese Tang dynasty criminal law to analyze what restrictions were provided by the traditional Chinese law for state violence against convicted criminals, and what penalties for government employees, who violated those restrictions.