| "Zu-Zhi", namely rules made and institutions created by ancestors with instructions of past emperors as its main content, played an essential role in both state governance and social control in ancient China. As binding codes of conduct, Zu-Zhi covered the distribution and balance of state power, the court operation mechanisms, major decision-making, the appointment and removal of important officers, as well as tributary diplomacy. They were mainly implemented through the "Zu-Zhi Refutation Mechanism", presided over by the emperor. Zu-Zhi often took the forms of imperial order, imperial edict and other kinds of precedence and practice, and most of them maintained the non-codified and non-public legal mystic features of the pre-Spring and Autumn Period. They had the nature of primitive fundamental state law. Zu-Zhi and common decrees had different functions but were linked to each other, and together they formed a complete legal system in ancient China, that is the "Zu-Zhi & Law-and-Decree" system. Zu-Zhi were consistent with the patriarchal clan system featuring respect for ancestors and family members in ancient China and solved the serious problems in the dynastic governance system caused by the hereditary system of throne. Nevertheless, they also had negative impacts on the improvement of the law-and-decree system. |
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