| The Civil Code Draft of Qing Dynasty assimilated the essence of advanced foreign legal culture and adopted the concept of legal personality capacity, which established the statutory framework of personality rights and laid the foundation of Chinese personality right legislations. The Civil Code Draft of the Republic of China followed the said code and recognized different types of personality rights, but made some minor changes. The Civil Code of the Republic of China, following the pattern of The Civil Code Draft of the Republic of China, dealt with personality rights in the chapter of obligations. In today’s mainland China, the General Principles of Civil Law of 1989, together with judicial decisions, judicial interpretations and subordinate regulations, formulates the open structure for personality rights with separate subchapter of rights to personality and identity, and hence founds the body of legislation on personality rights and its contents.Viewed in a historical way, legislation on personality rights in China has always been adopting the route of combining general principles and obligations, and only the orientation of definitions of personality rights has changed over time. However, the General Principles of Civil Law is deemed as a watershed, as the legislation on personality rights has been upgraded from a two-dimension structure only involving provisions on civil subjects and obligations to a three-dimension one where liability regime has begun to cover personality rights. This three-dimension structure also corresponds to the three elements of personality rights: subjects, definitions and remedies. From the Civil Code Draft of Qing Dynasty to the General Principles of Civil Law, legislation on personality rights has changed subtly while succeeding the previous legal documents and finally fractured from its antecedences. Nonetheless, its organism existed exuberantly in the society, and consciously developed itself in a rational and progressive way via legislations. The social culture of respecting personal dignity has supported this self-consciousness and will possibly provide us with a new path to rule of law via integrating constitutionalism into civil law provisions. |
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