A Study On Shenjiaben’s Human Rights Thought

ShenJiaben was Born in the era of the Opium War when Chinese feudalism were going toward a dead end, he was born in the family of feudal senior officials, who were educated and had a profound understanding and knowledge of traditional Chinese humanitarian ideas. When worked in the ministry of penalty, he continue to study the ancient Chinese historical materials, meanwhile,conducted a deep research on the human rights therein the Western bourgeois’ ideology and theory,therefore,the traditional humanitarian ideas and the human rights in the modern Western bourgeois ideology had a profound impact on ShenJiaben’s ideology of human rights.At the end of the Qing dynasty, the Qing government authorized ShenJiaben to carry out a profound amendment of law in order to maintain its crumbling feudal order, ShenJiaben finally had a chance to have his human rights ideology reflected in the formulation and revision of laws.The main thought on human rights reflected out of the process of law amendment includes:First, he attached importance to the life and health rights of human beings, in order to protect them,ShenJiaben clamed the principle of legality, and abolished the system of "analogies"; He also advocated to abrogate the draconian laws while asserted individualized penalty; About the death penalty, ShenJiaben proposed that the approval process must be stricted, the modalities of the implementation of the death penalty must be single, the place that the execution of the death must be secret. Second, called for the respect of the right of equality, ShenJiaben primarily proposed to eliminate the Manchu privileges, and implemented the equality of Manchurian and Han,asserted equality between husband and wife, and the ideas of personal equality and justice equality.ShenJiaben was one of the first awaked Chinese on the issue of human rights in modern China, the philosophy of human rights he presented while amending the law, had a powerful impact to the development and diffusion of human rights thought of China.From then on,human rights ideas were wide spread all around China and played a significant role in modern China, whoever that tried to engage in human rights abuse would be condemned.Undoubtly, ShenJiaben’s human rights thought were progressive,but there was boundness too. His human rights thought was merely a transition of traditional humanitarian thought to the modern ideology of human rights, many of his views and ideas about human rights still belong to the traditional humanitarian.Nevertheless, as a pioneer in human rights thought, this Reforms and Modification of the legal process and practice advocated by human rights had a profound impact on follow generations, and played a major role in awakening the national human rights thought of China,Since then, human rights thought were widely accepted, and no one dared to violate public notions and trample on human rights. Even under the rule of Northern Warlords and then the Kuomintang, they have to use the slogan of Democratic Republic as a pretext in order to achieve their legal dominance. ShenJiaben developed and amended the law in the end of the Qing Dynasty, which lately became the foundation and blueprint of the legal system of the the Northern warlords and the Republic of China, and some of the previsions were directly enacted after slightly modifie.After researching on ShenJiaben’s human rights thought,we could come to some conclusive points on the construction of modern human rights system in China:first, the cause of human rights development is a mix of forward and twists and turns; second,the construct of human rights system must consistent with the economic, politics and cultural system;Third, the development of the of human rights must adhere to the proccess of internationalization; Fourth, the development of human rights must depend on a perfect legal system and on a group of highly educated justs and officers.