626 laws and legal codes: Europe Jade cicada, China (second to first century b.c.e.); jade cicadas were placed as protection on the tongue of the dead, but full burial suits of jade were restricted by sumptuary laws to royalty (© The Trustees of the British Museum) In the 300s b.c.e the province of Qin adopted legalism There its chief advocate was Shang Yang (d 338 b.c.e.) He saw to it that even the crown prince of Qin was punished for a crime He was known for his cruelty and political treachery When the crown prince became king of Qin, Shang Yang had to flee the province When Zheng of Qin reunified China and renamed himself Qin Shi Huangdi, he imposed legalism on the empire He tried to regulate all of the business of the nation Some of his efforts had practical value For example, a law that standardized the width for all axles on carts meant that ruts in roads could be standardized, allowing for greater speed in transporting goods to market and putting an end to the tipping over of carts because one wheel was in a rut while the other was not Other laws made tax collecting easier However, the criminal laws were unbearable It seemed that no one could go a day without violating a few laws, and the punishments for breaking those laws were cruel Qin Shi Huangdi took advantage of people’s tendency accidentally to break laws, amassing a huge force of convicted laborers who worked on building projects, such as the Great Wall Legalism was so loathed by the Chinese that they exterminated Qin Shi Huangdi’s entire family in 210 b.c.e., ensuring that the Qin Dynasty and legalism would not rise again The founder of the Han Dynasty, Liu Bang, instituted Confucianism as the philosophy of his government The law retained some of the doctrines of legalism, such as those enforcing taxation and obedience to the emperor, but Confucianism replaced most of the harsh laws of legalism with the principle of compassion It took until about 100 b.c.e for Confucianist magistrates fully to supplant legalist magistrates In 145 b.c.e Governor Wen Weng of the province of Shu, not satisfied with the number of educated people available for employment in his government, began schools that taught Confucianism to boys of all social classes His idea was adopted by the empire as a whole, and the schools produced the magistrates and the law enforcement officers of China A magistrate was expected to be impartial, with his court being the one place in the empire where a poor person could challenge a rich one People could appeal to higher authorities in government if they lost their cases The emperor was expected to right wrongly decided cases in order to maintain his divine right to rule, which the gods could take away from him if he were unjust, but by c.e a census showed that there were nearly 60 million people in China, making it impossible for the emperor to hear every appeal The emperor’s magistrates were expected to memorize the laws they enforced and to prove themselves knowledgeable before being appointed to office These magistrates helped maintain a sense of a single nation with one legal code through the centuries of upheaval after the Han Dynasty ended, even though there were often three or more governments vying to rule the empire A lack of written records for ancient laws makes identifying any laws outside China and India very difficult Many Pacific islands were not yet settled, and those that were settled were only beginning to form societies governed by laws The islands of Java and Borneo seem to have begun forming kingdoms late in the ancient era, perhaps in the 200s or 300s c.e., but the possible existence of these kingdoms is mostly inferred from scant Chinese records of trade in southeastern Asia during the medieval era The formation of legal systems on these islands may not have begun before the medieval era The major nation in Southeast Asia from the 100s to 500s c.e was Funan, which controlled territory from the Mekong Delta into what is now Cambodia It left behind Hindu temples, the existence of which suggests to archaeologists that Funan’s laws probably resembled those of ancient India Direct evidence of Funan’s laws is scant Korea was influenced by China, which established trade cities on the Korean peninsula during the Han Dynasty In about 384 c.e., when the royal family of the Korean kingdom of Paekche converted to Buddhism, Chinese forms of government and Chinese laws began to be adopted by Paekche, and the Chinese legal system moved through the Korean peninsula over the next 200 years Ancient Korea is believed by most historians to have had a strong influence on ancient Japan; through Korea, Chinese culture came to Japan The laws of ancient Japan are not known, but sometime in the 100s or 200s c.e., the Japanese on the island Kyushu, and probably the island Honshu as well, began adopting Chinese customs During the 300s and 400s c.e., governments on these islands began modeling themselves on Chinese governments, and they probably adapted Chinese legal practices to their own needs Early Japanese written records from the medieval era suggest that the laws mostly applied to the upper classes of Japan and that traditional Japanese tribal customs prevailed among the rest of the Japanese EUROPE BY AMY HACKNEY BLACKWELL The people of ancient Europe did not record their laws in writing Historians have reconstructed ancient European