VOLUME V, CHAPTER 2, SECTION 2
The Law Cannot Govern the Many
The previous section spoke of how the law must pass through human feeling, because human beings are living entities. Yet can human feeling solve everything? It cannot. This section addresses the saying, the law does not punish the crowd. When the number of people violating a law exceeds the enforcement capacity of the law, the law simply fails to govern. This is not the failure of law. It is the natural boundary of law as a human-made tool. Like the law is nothing beyond human feeling, this is another old saying looked down upon by mainstream jurisprudence that ordinary people understand completely.
One. This Old Saying Also Carries Two Layers of Prejudice Above Its Head
The saying that the law does not punish the crowd has been spoken by ordinary people for centuries. It likewise lacks an earliest recorded source and emerged slowly from actual living. Yet it sounds more like an unavoidable truth: the law cannot govern the majority. When the majority together do a certain thing that breaks a law, that law cannot be enforced.
Mainstream jurisprudence similarly dislikes this phrase. The core of modern legal thought is the universality of law, meaning law should treat everyone equally regardless of whether one person or a thousand people commit a violation. All should be pursued under the same standard, otherwise law loses its authority. This section must lift this saying out of two layers of prejudice. The first layer misreads the law does not punish the crowd as a failure of law, treating it as a defect that should not exist and ought to be overcome. The second layer confuses the crowd with the general public. The crowd here does not mean the general populace. It means the violating majority. The two positions are entirely distinct.
Set these two layers of prejudice aside, and the position of the phrase becomes clear at once. It is not an expression of discouragement. It is an objective boundary.
Two. The Law Does Not Punish the Crowd Speaks of an Objective Fact: Enforcement Capacity Has a Ceiling
The enforcement capacity of law is finite. The number of enforcement officers is limited, court caseload capacity is limited, prison beds are limited, and police, judges, and lawyers combined have a ceiling on the number of cases they can handle.
Consider a daily example to make this clear. At an intersection with a few traffic officers, managing a few people running a red light on normal days is more than manageable. But if thousands of people cross against the light together during peak hours, a few officers cannot even physically stop them, let alone write individual citations. The law ceases to function at that precise moment, not because the law was written wrong, but because manpower reached its limit. Scale this scene up to a city or a nation, and the logic remains identical. Once the number of violators passes that threshold, the machine of law can no longer turn. This is not the failure of law. It is the natural boundary of law as wei, a tool with a maximum capacity beyond which it cannot operate.
This layer remains identical across ancient and modern times, East and West. No matter how powerful a state apparatus may be, there is a limit to the number of people it can pursue simultaneously. That limit is the invisible wall called the law does not punish the crowd. On this side of the wall, law can keep up. On the other side of the wall, law can only stare helplessly.
Three. Laozi Saw Through This Early On: The More Laws There Are, the More Violators Are Created Out of Thin Air
Around five hundred years before the common era, Laozi wrote a line in the Dao De Jing, cited earlier.
The more laws are put on display, the more thieves there are. Laozi, Dao De Jing, Chapter 57.
The more numerous, detailed, and strict laws become, the more thieves appear. Why is that? Because as laws multiply, the scope of violation expands. Things that were not violations previously become violations with the addition of a single clause. Where only one person in ten thousand was a violator, adding a law might turn that into one hundred, and adding another might turn it into a thousand.
A concrete illustration makes this clear. A street stall operates for decades without anyone calling it illegal. One day a law is added stating that operating without a license is a violation. The very next morning, street vendors who followed the rules for decades become violators one by one. The stall remains the same stall, the people remain the same people, and the activity remains the same activity. The only change is a new line of law above their heads. The number of violators did not rise because anyone grew worse. It was created by the stroke of a pen adding a new law. The denser laws are enacted, the more violators appear out of thin air, until the number grows so large that law can no longer govern them. This is a mathematical certainty, not a matter of human intent turning bad.
Those who write laws often assume that adding one more law reduces disorder by one degree. Yet when calculated to the end, adding one more law frequently just designates a new group of violators without necessarily reducing harmful acts by a single count.
Four. Confucius Answered by Reducing Disputes, Not Multiplying Laws
Around five hundred years before the common era, Confucius spoke another line, also cited earlier.
In hearing litigation, I am like anyone else. What is necessary is to cause litigation not to arise at all. Confucius, The Analects, Yan Yuan.
In judging cases I am like others, but what I truly seek is to prevent disputes from arising in the first place. Confucius understood the natural boundary of law, so he sought not more and better laws, but fewer disputes. If disputes do not arise, law need not be moved. Laozi and Confucius aligned completely on this point. Both saw through to the fact that law is a tool, tools have boundaries, and the highest state is not building a larger tool, but enabling the group to live in a position where the tool does not need to be called upon.
Five. The Sample of the Late Qin: The World Has Suffered Under Qin for Long
Around one hundred years before the common era, Sima Qian wrote a passage in the Records of the Grand Historian that laid bare the principle that the law does not punish the crowd.
The world has suffered under Qin for long. Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, House of Chen She.
Chen Sheng and Wu Guang led nine hundred garrison soldiers to Yuyang for border duty. En route they met heavy rains that rendered roads impassable. Under Qin law, missing the deadline carried the death penalty. Continuing meant execution for missing the deadline, and turning back also meant death. Sima Qian recorded what Chen Sheng said to Wu Guang.
Now fleeing means death, and raising a great undertaking means death. Since both mean death, is it not better to die for the state? Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, House of Chen She.
Fleeing meant death, starting a revolt meant death. Since both meant death anyway, it was better to die for a cause. Those nine hundred men launched a revolt with a single phrase, and within months the entire realm responded, causing the Qin Dynasty to collapse rapidly.
Why did this happen? Because Qin law was strict, intricate, and carried collective punishment for minor offenses. Qin law was originally designed to turn Qin from a weak state into a strong state, and it succeeded. Qin unified the realm. Yet after unification, Qin law was not adjusted. Strict laws designed to govern a weak state continued to be used to govern a unified realm. As a result, people who were not violators were turned into violators by new laws, and people with minor violations were turned into major violators by harsh laws. By the time of the Second Emperor of Qin, violators had grown so numerous that the law could no longer govern them.
Chen Sheng and Wu Guang merely lit a match. The gunpowder had been piled up by Qin law itself. Sima Qian offered no commentary, writing out the event directly so readers could see for themselves that law has a natural boundary. Once lawmakers push past that boundary, what collapses is not just the law, but the entire regime.
Six. Late Dynasties Throughout History Played Almost the Exact Same Scene
The Qin Dynasty is the simplest sample of this layer of position, but it is not the only sample. The late Sui, late Tang, late Yuan, late Ming, and late Qing dynasties each saw a line of suffering under a regime followed by an explosion of the law does not punish the crowd.
The pattern in the closing years of these dynasties was nearly identical. First, laws grew denser year by year and tax burdens heavier year by year, pushing law-abiding farmers to the side of violation through one new regulation after another. Living within the law became impossible, while breaking the law carried severe penalties, pushing millions into a corner where death was the outcome either way. At that stage, no number of officials or severity of punishment could hold things down, because what had to be contained was no longer a handful of thieves, but the greater part of the realm. Every change of dynasty was backed by the exact same law: not that the new ruler was far wiser than the old, but that the old ruler pushed the law past its boundary.
Viewing the rise and fall of dynasties merely as cycles of fate misses this concrete law. What truly topples a dynasty is rarely external enemies, but its own laws, tightened year after year, forcing too many orderly people into places with no way out.
Seven. A Line from Huang Zongxi Sets the Lawmaker's Vision Straight
Around 1660, Huang Zongxi wrote a passage during the transition between the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Whether the realm is in order or chaos lies not in the rise or fall of a single family name, but in the sorrow or joy of the ten thousand people. Huang Zongxi, Waiting for the Dawn, Origin of Ministers.
Whether the realm experiences order or chaos rests not on the rise or fall of a single dynasty, but on the sorrow or joy of the populace. Applying this line to the law does not punish the crowd: if a lawmaker cares only about whether his law can be enforced, he sees the law does not punish the crowd as a nuisance. If a lawmaker cares about the sorrow and joy of the people, he sees why so many people are living in a position of violation, and he moves to adjust the root cause of that position.
Adjusting the root cause might mean reducing taxes, amending laws, altering methods of enforcement, or recognizing that a certain category of violation should never have been considered a violation in the first place. It never means using harsher laws to suppress more people, which only pushes the law does not punish the crowd toward an explosion. Huang Zongxi watched the Ming collapse and the Qing take root. His deepest observation of law belonged to the exact same thread as Laozi, Confucius, and Sima Qian.
Eight. Turning the Lens Westward, American Prohibition Is a Complete Sample
Around 1920, the United States enacted Prohibition. In 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified, banning the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol nationwide. The intention of lawmakers was noble, seeking to reduce domestic violence, crime, and poverty caused by alcohol abuse.
Yet in actual operation, ordinary citizens continued to drink secretly, bootleggers spread across the country, organized crime grew powerful using the opportunity, police and local officials accepted bribes on a massive scale, and court dockets overflowed. By 1933, the United States had to pass the Twenty-First Amendment to repeal Prohibition. That law operated for thirteen years, and its outcome was pushing violators to include almost the entire society, empowering organized crime, corrupting law enforcement, and finally forcing lawmakers themselves to pull back.
This is the Western version of the law does not punish the crowd, sharing an identical structure with suffering under the Qin. What Laozi said two thousand five hundred years ago, the more laws are put on display, the more thieves there are, received a complete validation in twentieth-century America. Qin positioned it this way, America positioned it this way. The measure is one and the same, and readers can view it for themselves without declaring one superior to the other.
Nine. The Position Set by This Section
This section sets the sixth layer: law has its natural boundary. Exceeding that boundary is not the failure of law, but the failure of lawmakers. The responsibility of a lawmaker is not to make laws as numerous and strict as possible, but to keep law within the boundary where it can operate. A community where the majority lives in a position of violation cannot be governed by law. It can only be governed by adjusting the root causes that create such positions.
Knowing the boundary of law is the deepest wisdom of a lawmaker. Ignorant of this boundary, weaving the net tighter and increasing penalties only pushes law closer to the day when the law does not punish the crowd.
What counts as knowing the boundary comes down to a single rule: before enacting a law, weigh how many people that law will push into a position of violation. If it touches only a very small number of genuinely harmful individuals, the law stands firm. If once enacted, half the people turn into violators overnight, that law is not governing chaos, it is creating chaos, and should be withdrawn early.
Laozi spoke of the more laws are put on display, the more thieves there are. Confucius spoke of causing litigation not to arise. Sima Qian spoke of suffering under Qin for long. Huang Zongxi spoke of the sorrow and joy of the people. Ordinary people speak of the law does not punish the crowd. Across two thousand years, it is the same thread with different expressions. This section neither encourages violating laws in crowds nor merely criticizes over-legislation. It helps readers see clearly the natural boundary of law as a human-made tool. When reading a new law in the future, observe for yourself how many people that law will affect, how many among them will be pushed into a position of violation, and whether pushing to the limit will hit that wall where the law does not punish the crowd.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section Three. No One Is Without Fault, and So the Law Is Never Perfect.