The Legal Tradition of Incorporating Ritual into Law and China’s Legal Modernization
- DOI
- 10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_93How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- China; Rule of Law; Ritual; Modernization; Morality
- Abstract
Traditional Chinese society, shaped by the “Hundred Schools of Thought” discourse, established the process of “Confucianization of law” under the dominant influence of Legalist and Confucian ideologies, making the incorporation of ritual into law a paradigmatic model for social governance. In modern times, under the impact of Western modernity, China faced the dilemmas of East-West cultural friction and the tension between tradition and modernity. The Communist Party of China (CPC), guided by Marxism, reconstructed Chinese society through constitutionalism, accomplishing its modernization transformation. In implementing the rule of law, protecting the market economy and individual rights has become a critical task. Building upon this foundation, reviving the tradition of incorporating ritual into law—grounded in the dialectical fusion of “sentiment, reason, and law”—and advancing “virtue-law co-governance” are imperative pathways for achieving modernization of China’s legal system.
- Copyright
- © 2026 The Author(s)
- Open Access
- Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Haoyu Wang PY - 2026 DA - 2026/03/26 TI - The Legal Tradition of Incorporating Ritual into Law and China’s Legal Modernization BT - Proceeding of 2025 8th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2025) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 865 EP - 873 SN - 2352-5398 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_93 DO - 10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_93 ID - Wang2026 ER -