Human Rights Concepts and Their Institutional Expressions in Legal Codes: Focusing on the Rights and Protection of Prisoners in the Tang Dynasty

LIU Xiaolin

Abstract: During the Tang Dynasty, incarcerated prisoners enjoyed various rights during their detention, including access to clothing, food, medical care, hygiene, rest, and burial arrangements. Under specific conditions, prisoners were even granted leave for family events such as funerals or weddings. The Rules for Prison Officials (Yuguanling) detailed the rights and safeguards for prisoners and set clear guidelines on the use of restraints during detention. Additionally, the Statutes on Deciding Cases (Duanyu Lü) outlined explicit penalties for judicial officials who failed to ensure prisoner rights or committed related violations. Interrogation processes adhered to strict procedural and substantive requirements, including direct questioning by judges, the avoidance of cases involving personal connections or conflicts of interest, evidence-based cross-examinations, careful investigation of circumstances, and consistent rulings across similar cases. The Tang legal code imposed comprehensive, detailed, and stringent limits on the application of coercive interrogations, specifying restrictions on tools, methods, subjects, and extent. Any breaches of these restrictions were met with severe punishments. While the concept of “human rights” did not appear in Tang legal and administrative texts, these laws and regulations embody abundant principles of people-centered governance, benevolence, and human rights concepts. Systematic examination of these ideas, values, and principles — when integrated with the Marxist perspective on human rights — can enrich China’s contemporary human rights practice, contribute to articulating China’s unique narrative on human rights, and play a role in constructing a distinctly Chinese discourse on human rights. Such efforts could provide Chinese wisdom and proposals for the advancement of human rights globally.