On Tang Dynasty’s Pardon System

In order to better protect human life and human dignity, pardon system whichbetter reflected humanitarianism was designed and existed as a shining pearl in thehistory of human. The pardon system has a long history. According to the historicalrecord, it originated in ancient times, and reached maturity in Tang Dynasty. It waspositive inherited and renewed from the Song Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty. After NewChina was founded, the pardon as a political strategy also made a provision in theConstitution. The government offered a full pardon to the war criminals of Japan andthe Kuomintang, but the pardon system was not restart in recent decades. Therefore, thestudy was carried on the pardon system in Tang Dynasty, and in order to be able toprovide some inspiration for the restart of today’s pardon system.The paper is divided into four parts, and the focus of research was the developmentprocess of Tang Dynasty pardon system. The Confucianism、 Buddhism and Taoismspirit behind it and its validity were explained. The comment on Tang pardon system isgiven. The research result can provide a reference for the construction of China pardonsystem which is not start up for many years. The first part is made up by two parts, firstintroduced the meaning of pardon, after then, the writer described emphasis on thepardon system of the Tang Dynasty, and compared with the pardon system of otherdynasty that before of the Tang. From the historical records about the politicalbackground of pardon, we can see the difference between pardon systems in differentperiods. The reason why the numbers of pardon were different in different periods wasanalyzed.The pardon system in Tang Dynasty shows the maturity itself and highlightthe ruler’s respect for life. The second part discusses the relationship between thepardon system of the Tang Dynasty and Confucian, Buddhism and Taoism. The ruler isinevitable affected by the impact of the thought of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism,especially Confucian when he development of the pardon system or enacting anamnesty. The third section describes the jurisprudence and their pros and cons of theTang Dynasty pardon system, and a simple analysis of the jurisprudence of the TangDynasty pardon system was done. The jurisprudence of the Tang Dynasty pardonsystem in the rule of man was Reason Law. At first the Tang Dynasty pardon systemrevelation was introduced, then a brief overview of the existing pardon system in chinawas given in the fourth part,let us restart the pardon system again, so that we can get better protect for human rights and dignity.When we have known the pardon system of the Tang Dynasty, we can see that thepardon system is not designed by foreign, our ancestors had left us with a humanpolitical system such as it, and it have matured in the Tang Dynasty. This superiorsystem is a positive suggestion for us.