Qin law operationalized age-of-capacity two millennia before Anglo-American law.

Evidence

For children below this threshold, injury caused by parental discipline is legally suspect — the parent must demonstrate that the child was capable of understanding the disciplinary purpose. If the child was not yet of capacity, the parent’s defense fails. The parent is liable, not as for full homicide, but as for what we might call aggravated discipline.

This is strikingly modern. The concept of age-of-capacity — that disciplinary action against a child of an age below intellectual responsibility is legally distinct from action against an older child — is, in contemporary Western legal practice, a relatively recent development. Anglo-American law did not formally develop the distinction until the mid-nineteenth century. The Qin code was operationalizing it in 217 BCE.

— , The Rod and the Child, 1047

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes contemporary developmental-capacity debates in modern Western family law. — connects to: Qin law protected children’s lives earlier than Roman law did. — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 1043

Related

• Qin law protected children’s lives earlier than Roman law did. (similarity 0.86)
• Qin law anchored China’s low corporal-punishment profile for two millennia. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Qin law protected children’s lives earlier than Roman law did. #expands (0.60) — , The Rod and the Child, 1043