VOLUME V, CHAPTER 1, SECTION 3
Whom the Law Serves
The last section settled the character wei, establishing that law is a man-made matter and bound to be imperfect. This section moves directly to the question that touches every person living under its net: whom was the law actually made for? Everyone who lives under the law has asked this in his heart, yet the answer given on official platforms rarely matches the answer kept in ordinary minds. This section sets both answers side by side, leaving the reader to see where the tear between them opened up.
Start with the ancestor who laid this bare earliest of all, Guan Zhong. Around 700 BC, in the state of Qi, Guan Zhong wrote down a single principle. In the way of governing a state, he said, one must first enrich the people. Guan Zhong did not speak of enacting laws first and then governing. He spoke of enriching the people before ever talking about governance. That layer operates on a dimension entirely different from the contemporary habit of elevating rule of law itself into the supreme value. Modern discourse often assumes that as long as laws are comprehensive, enforcement is strict, and procedures are fair, governance will run smoothly. Twenty-seven hundred years ago, Guan Zhong saw straight through that assumption. No matter how refined the laws may be, if the people are poor, governance remains difficult. But once the people are wealthy, laws do not need to be so convoluted, and governance naturally proceeds with ease.
Take a moment to weigh this carefully. Guan Zhong did not place the law first. He placed the wealth of the people first, treating law merely as a tool trailing behind. A tool serves a purpose, and the purpose remains the master. Whether a law is good or not depends not on how neatly or grandly it is written, but on whether, in the end, it makes life better for ordinary people. Once that order of priority is set straight, many things that follow become clear.
On the question of whom the law serves, two answers exist side by side: one written on official banners, and one kept inside people's hearts. The answer on official banners is written into almost every modern constitution and legal textbook: the law serves the people, the law protects civil rights, and everyone is equal before the law.
Inside the hearts of the common folk, another sentence is kept: the law is a tool for the strong to constrain the weak. That sentence has no single author. No legal scholar established it, and no political movement coined it. It spread slowly from mouth to mouth along streets and alleys, through ordinary people who had been worn down by the legal system. Yet the public understands it instantly, better than any statute on the books.
Set both sentences side by side. The official words say the law protects the people. The words in people's hearts say the law is a tool for the strong to constrain the weak. This section does not aim to judge which is right and which is wrong. Its purpose is to put both on the table, so the reader can see clearly where the rift between them cracked open.
To see that rift, one must return to the character wei. According to Xunzi, law is a man-made affair. The ones who enact laws are human beings, and human beings carry their own positions, interests, and biases. Following that line, the question of whom the law serves yields a plain answer: it depends on who made the law.
Around 350 BC, Shen Dao set down a similar thought. A ruler is set up for the sake of the world, he said, not the world set up for the sake of the ruler. Shen Dao separated the position from the purpose of that position. Setting up a ruler can be done for the sake of the world, or it can be done for the sake of the ruler himself. On the surface both are setting up a ruler, but in substance, whom they lean toward is opposite.
Apply that same principle to the law. Enacting a law can be done for the sake of the people, or it can be done for the sake of the lawmakers themselves. The text of a law is dead, but the people who make it are alive. Whichever side the living lawmakers stand on, the dead text will lean toward that same side.
This tension is no abstract debate. It played out repeatedly across Chinese history, and two historical snapshots make it visible. At the start of the Han Dynasty, Xiao He drafted a three-item code for Emperor Gaozu: those who kill shall die, and those who injure or steal shall be punished accordingly. Three lines completed the law. Its content was plain, its execution was simple, and ordinary people understood it instantly and accepted it without reservation. During those early decades of Han recovery, that plain legal system formed the foundation: the simpler the law, the more room the people had to breathe.
After Emperor Wu came to power, however, laws grew increasingly dense and intricate. Figures like Zhang Tang and Zhao Yu crafted detailed, meticulous statutes. On the surface, this was refining the law, but in practice, it provided pretexts for collecting taxes, suppressing local powerhouses, and controlling the populace. The face of the law remained unchanged, but its service quietly shifted from the people to the imperial treasury. By Emperor Wu's later years, displaced refugees multiplied, and bandits appeared everywhere. He issued the Decree of Luntai in self-reproach, admitting that earlier policies had harmed the people too deeply.
Notice the deepest stroke here: the text of the law changed very little, but what shifted was whom it landed on and whom it spoke for. The same law that protected the people in prosperous times became an iron rake for extracting wealth under harsh governance. What changed was not the law itself, but the position of the hand holding it. Sima Qian documented this period in great detail in the Biographies of Harsh Officials in the Records of the Grand Historian. He added no commentary, laying out their statements, actions, and ultimate fates item by item, leaving readers to see for themselves whom the laws they enacted and enforced were truly serving.
Confucianism and Legalism split into two distinct lines on this matter. Around 300 BC, Mencius wrote even more directly. The people are the most valuable, he said, the state comes next, and the ruler is the least important. Mencius argued that all institutions, including the law, ought to be established according to that order. Yet in actual dynastic practice, things often ran in reverse: the ruler stood at the front, the people were pressed at the bottom, and the law served the ruler first, the state second, and reached the people last. Mencius understood this well; he knew that the people are the most valuable was an expression of how things ought to be, while rulers who actually practiced it were exceedingly rare.
Around 250 BC, Han Fei presented the opposite view. Law, he wrote, consists of statutes compiled in records, set up in government offices, and proclaimed to the common people. Han Fei placed the position of the law in plain sight: law is enacted by government offices and proclaimed to the people. It is not enacted by the people together, nor is it meant to constrain government offices. Han Fei was a Legalist, and he defined law as a tool used by those seated above to manage those below. One line represents the Confucian view centered on the people, while the other represents the Legalist view centered on the ruler. For more than two thousand years, these two lines pulled against each other in historical dynasties, mostly operating as Confucianism on the outside and Legalism on the inside, speaking of the people with their lips while using control techniques with their hands. Once a reader grasps these two threads, looking at the law of any dynasty reveals which way it was leaning at that moment.
Turn the camera to the West, and consider a widely circulated saying alongside its centuries of actual operation. After the founding of the United States in 1776, several early figures established a legal tradition. The most widely cited idea within this tradition is that the purpose of the law is to constrain the government, not the citizens. This phrase is repeated constantly in American constitutional discourse and often attributed to a specific founder, though its exact origin is hard to pin down. What does exist in plain black and white is James Madison's statement. If men were angels, he wrote in Federalist No. 51, no government would be necessary.
That stance stands directly opposite the Legalist view that law is a tool applied from top to bottom. The American founders sought to establish the law as a constraint applied from bottom to top: the people enact the constitution, and the constitution constrains the government. On paper, this seems a dimension higher than Legalism. Law is no longer a whip used by those above to manage those below, but an attempt to create a rein held by those below to hold back those above.
That is the statement written on paper, and words on paper are one thing, while centuries of accumulated practice are another. Set the two hundred years of American legal operation alongside those words. Paper says the law constrains the government. The accumulated reality shows that the instances of government using the law to constrain citizens far outnumber the instances of citizens using the law to constrain government. This compilation makes no judgment on whether that statement is right or wrong. It simply places words and actions side by side, doing so for China and for the West alike, applying the same ruler and leaving the judgment to the reader.
Why does the law consistently slide from protecting the weak to aiding the strong across history and cultures? Laozi pointed to the root cause in a single line. The way of heaven, he wrote in the Dao De Jing, takes away from where there is excess and adds to where there is not enough. The way of man is not so; it takes away from where there is not enough to offer to those who have excess. When laws are enacted, lawmakers may hold the intention of adding to where there is not enough, but in actual operation, laws frequently turn into offering to those who have excess. Why does this happen? There is a plain reason behind it: the people who enact laws, enforce laws, and interpret laws are almost all among the group that already has excess. When laws are enacted, enforced, and interpreted by those with excess, they naturally begin to lean toward those who have excess.
Keep one crucial point in mind: this does not mean that lawmakers are inherently bad people. It is because human beings view the world from their own position. A person with excess, even with good intentions, finds it difficult to truly crouch down and view a situation from the perspective of someone who does not have enough. The laws he enacts naturally carry the bias of his position. This is determined by position, not by conscience. Railing against the wicked nature of lawmakers misses the point. Seeing that this is the result of position means seeing the true root.
Is there no hope for the law, then? The ancestors said there is hope, but the conditions are demanding. Guan Zhong said one must first enrich the people, but to achieve that, lawmakers must consciously lower their own position and raise that of the people. Shen Dao said a ruler is set up for the sake of the world, but once a ruler sits on the throne, the easiest thing to forget is those words, for the sake of the world. Mencius said the people are the most valuable, but acknowledged that those who actually lived by it were few and far between.
The ancestors all saw the exact same thing: making the law truly serve the people is a position that is extremely difficult to maintain. It requires culture, education, public oversight, and the personal cultivation of lawmakers working together to hold it up. If any of those forces collapses, the law slides back toward offering to those who have excess. This is not pessimism. It is placing reality on the table, so people understand where the value of this position lies and why it is so difficult.
This section establishes its fourth layer. The beneficiary of the law is not determined by the text of the law itself, but by the position of those who enact, enforce, and interpret it. If lawmakers stand on the side of those with excess, the law serves those with excess. If they stand on the side of the people, it serves the people. If they stand on the side of themselves, it serves themselves. The text is merely the clothing, while position is the body underneath. No matter how splendid the clothing may be, it cannot conceal which way the body is leaning.
Return to the opening of this section. The official words say the law serves the people. The words in people's hearts say the law is a tool for the strong to constrain the weak. Guan Zhong spoke of enriching the people first, Shen Dao spoke of setting up a ruler for the sake of the world, Mencius spoke of the people as most valuable, Han Fei spoke of law as that which the government proclaims to the populace, Madison spoke of constraining government, and Laozi spoke of taking from those who do not have enough to offer to those who have excess. These statements appear to fight one another on the surface, but underneath they belong to the same thread. Whom the law serves is a question that is constantly in motion, shifting alongside the movements of lawmakers, enforcers, public oversight, and cultural transmission. There is no once-and-for-all answer.
This section does not aim to tell the reader whom the law ought to serve. It aims to equip the reader with a ruler: the understanding that whom the law serves is a question constantly in motion. Take this ruler and measure every law, every act of enforcement, and every verdict around you. When reading a new law in the future, ask yourself: where do the people who made this law stand? Where do the people enforcing it stand? Where do the people interpreting it stand? Ask those questions, and you will understand whom that law is actually serving at this moment.
The next section turns to a famous household saying: law is nothing beyond human feeling. It will lift that phrase out of the prejudice of favoritism and corruption, restoring it to its original position. Reader, enter the next section carrying this set of tools: natural law, wei, and the fact that whom the law serves is constantly in motion.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Chapter Two. Three Old Sayings of Ordinary People, Where the Base of Law Sits.