from Text 7b - Toward a Well-Regulated Review of Death Sentences
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2025
The section titled “Institutions of Penal Prudence” (“Shenxing xian”) has established Qiu Jun’s reputation as a legal thinker in China, Korea, and Japan. After a brief review of this section, the chapter focuses on three issues on which Qiu showed fairly innovative thinking. First, he gave the most erudite and systematic exposition of moderation in the application of legal punishments. The Ming Code provided an array of inflexible sentences for an ever-growing amount of crimes, which caused discomfort among sensitive magistrates. Confucian Classics were mobilized in order to legitimize a more sparing use of the punitive arsenal, for which Qiu Jun provided the model argumentation. Second, he was instrumental in the insertion of judicial precedents in the Code to complement the statutes, which daringly braved the Ming founding emperor’s interdiction of changing the Code. Lastly, he pleaded for a better regulation of the death sentences review by the Assizes.
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