Political Analysis of Law

Author: Hu Yongjun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-10-01
Features: In the 18th century, rights politics rose in the West, becoming the dominant model of political and legal practice in the West for nearly three hundred years. To a large extent, this model has constituted an important reference for political and legal reforms in modern China. Against this backdrop, the author examines some of the major political and legal theories in the West and analyzes, combined with reality, the possible directions of China's political and legal development. The author regards modern rights discourse, traditional virtue discourse, and realistic interest discourse as three main discourses competing yet needing coordination in China's modernization process, and points out the corresponding three approaches to governance: the way of rights, the way of virtue, and the way of interests. The author believes that a good approach to governance should unify the principles of natural law, legal justice, and ethical morality. Therefore, China's political and legal practices should, under the value guidance of prioritizing the interests of the people, strengthen the construction of political and legal systems at the level of legal principles around human rights and civil rights, and at the ethical level, inherit the spirit of traditional morality, re-establish the moral subject, and seek the integration of virtue and rights, as well as the combination of moral principles and practical implementation.