SOURCE: Benjamin E. Wallacker, "The Poet as Jurist: Po chü-i and a Case of Conjugal Homicide," in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2, 1981, pp. 507-26.

In the following essay, Wallacker examines Po Chü-i 's written opinion on the case of Yao Wen-hsiu, for which Po had to decide how severe a penalty to impose on a wife-murderer. Chinese characters have been deleted from this essay.

Chinese criminal law has for a long time looked not only to the wrongdoer's act, but also to the state of his mind when he committed the act. Various degrees of culpability for the same act were distinguished by the Chinese according to whether the mind of the actor was more or less intent upon achieving the forbidden result. The Chinese forbore from bringing down upon the inadvertent killer, for example, the same weight of punishment laid upon his deliberate...