Moral Sensibilities, Emotions, and the Law: Extralegal Considerations in Tang Literary Judgments on Spousal Relationships

Abstract

Literary judgments (pan 判) were highly stylized prose pieces from the Tang dynasty written in response to legal and administrative controversies. The ability to compose judgments was the principal criterion by which candidates were selected for offices in the Tang bureaucracy. In this article, judgments written for cases that involved disputes between (prospective) spouses and their families are examined, with a focus on the use of extralegal considerations to resolve sensitive domestic conflicts. By analyzing select hypothetical judgments from Bai Juyi’s literary collection and three other judgments on family law cases (from a Dunhuang manuscript, a Tang miscellany, and the Song compendium Wenyuan yinghua 文苑英華), we may see how literary language and allusions played a role in eliciting the moral sensibilities and emotions of readers. For these cases, this strategy was more effective than arguments based on formal legal sources alone.