Some Features of the Official Law in Qin and Han Dynasties

Qin and Han Dynasties’s political power was based on the criticism of Zhou Dynasty’s noblemen politics and thus the exclusive law privilege held by Qin and Han Dynasties’s officials was still in a gradually forming and reinforcing period, which helped the official law in Qin and Han Dynasties to remain some relatively reasonable elements. To be specific, the official law in Qin and Han Dynasties mainly has the following characteristics: first, the process of choosing new officials was based on the recommendation under an official’s guarantee, which combined the individual benefits and venture together; second, what was important to the examination of an officials political achievement was whether the official was incorrupt and capable or not; third, in respect to the supervision of officials, which was based on the internal supervision within the administrative county system, the vertical supervision from the top to the bottom was further improved; fourth, officials’ crime, especially their economic crime, would be punished more severely than that of the common civilians.