What is the Spring and Autumn Prison Break? What is included in the Spring and Autumn Prison Break?

In the Han Dynasty, in addition to breaking the prison according to laws and decrees, the content of the book "Spring and Autumn" was directly cited as the basis for adjudicating cases in judicial practice, which was called the "Spring and Autumn" prison sentence.

Spring and Autumn is a chronicle of the Lu State revised by Confucius. The book "Spring and Autumn" is a product of the great social turmoil period of the transition from slavery to feudalism, and is written to stabilize the inherent monarchy, father, son, husband, and woman, save the collapse of etiquette, and then achieve the maintenance of the three-generation ritual system of respect, kinship, and distinction between men and women. In this history book, the basic guiding ideology and the fundamental criteria for judging right and wrong, good and evil, and virtuous or unscrupulous are the doctrines of etiquette and righteousness advocated by Confucianism.

Later generations of Confucian scholars regarded it as a classic, and many of the ideas in the book were followed from generation to generation as unquestionable dogmas.

Dong Zhongshu was the first to break the prison in "Spring and Autumn". In the middle of the Western Han Dynasty, the development of society provided good conditions for the spread of Confucianism, but at this time, Confucianism did not occupy a dominant position in the field of legislation. Because most of the main legal codes of the Han Dynasty were formulated before Emperor Wu of the early Han Dynasty monopolized Confucianism, and all inherited many contents of the Qin law, the traces of legalism are very obvious, and these codes cannot be changed quickly.

Therefore, the Confucian scholars represented by Dong Zhongshu began to interpret the current laws in the Spring and Autumn Period, which was directly used to guide the trial, which not only conformed to the interests of the landlord class, but also adapted to the political situation and the needs of the monarch at that time. Dong Zhongshu's "Spring and Autumn Decision" was widely quoted in the trial practice at that time, so that Dong Zhongshu was sick and at home, and the imperial court still sent people to ask him about his gains and losses whenever there was a political righteousness. From then on, the atmosphere of the Spring and Autumn Prison Break, which had a profound impact on China's feudal law, began to prevail.

The core of the sentence in the Spring and Autumn Period lies in the "conviction of the heart", that is, according to the spirit of the Spring and Autumn Period, the subjective motives of the offender are examined to determine whether he has committed a crime. The specific criteria are: "Those who are good and violate the law will be exempted", and "those who will be evil and conform to the law will be punished".

The principle of "condemnation of the heart" emphasizes the quality of the subjective "heart", and the standard of the quality of the "heart" is the ethical rule of Confucianism. To a certain extent, the "Spring and Autumn" prison sentence was an act of supplementing legislation. However, using subjective factors to determine the existence or absence of a crime and the severity of the punishment is very easy to push subjective imputation to the extreme in judicial practice.

Generally speaking, the "Spring and Autumn Prison Break" is based on the will and interests of the ruling class, and it can be interpreted as it pleases. The profound scriptures were advocated by the rulers to promote the legal consciousness that the rulers were satisfied with, so that the Confucian classics were codified and became the norms of behavior that bound people's actual lives. At the same time, it should also be noted that the implementation of the "Spring and Autumn Prison Break" has objectively played a role in compromising legislation and the conflict between the needs of social reality.

After a long period of Spring and Autumn prison executions, many Confucian moral concepts were directly given legal meanings, making China's feudal laws more and more cowardly.

1. Content. Since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Dong Zhongshu, suggested that he should take a blind way to break out of prison and "depose a hundred schools of thought and respect Confucianism alone", Confucianism has increasingly become official. Under the influence of Confucianism, Confucian scholars often used their status as judges to directly participate in the trial of cases or participate in the discussion of cases.

In the process of participating in the trial of cases, in the face of the Han law formulated in the early Han Dynasty that embodies the spirit of Legalism, in the case of not being able to revise the criminal law in time and misinterpret the criminal law, it adopts the direct reference to Confucian classics as the basis for the trial of cases, so as to realize the Confucian transformation of judicial activities. During the Han Dynasty and the Han Dynasty, the representatives who were engaged in the introduction of scriptures and prison sentences mainly included Dong Zhongshu, Gongsun Hong, Er Kuan, Ying Shao and others.

2. Principles. The conviction of the offender should be based on the facts of the crime, but the main thing is not to look at the facts, but to investigate the motive and cause of the crime and the psychological state of the offender. Anyone who has an improper mind, who is subjectively evil, who has a motive to commit a crime, even if he attempts to commit a crime, or who commits a minor crime, must be punished and severely punished.

The organizers and leaders of joint crimes, that is, the culprits of the culprits, should be punished even more.

On the other hand, if the motive and purpose of the offender are moral and humane, and it is only negligence, although the violation of the law can be exempted from punishment or the punishment can be mitigated, and even the person who commits a serious crime can be pardoned.