Legal Advice Any complex system evolves from the simplest combination of factors, and if you want to understand the present, you must ask where it came fromThe so-called Tao begets one, one begets two, two begets three, and three begets all things. So how did the origin of this complex system of law come into being?
According to the German sociologist Max Weber, law was originally developed from religion. The starting point of development is the various disputes between people.
When a dispute arises, there is a decision, and it is customary for people to ask the village elders or nobles to administer justice. But some issues may be particularly complicated, and the elders or nobles can't tell who is right and who is wrong, and at the same time, this issue is very important, and there must be an explanation, and people may magnify the move, which is the divine judgment.
The so-called divine judgment is to ask God to help determine who is right and who is wrong. God doesn't come forward to help you adjudicate, and people don't want to go to God to judge a case, so God judges in some specific ways. For example, in the Middle Ages, there were three main methods of the Germanic peoples, namely the method of fire, the method of water, and the method of duel.
Fire Cutting LawHe grabbed a red-hot soldering iron with his bare hands, bandaged his hand, and examined the injury three days later. If the injuries heal very quickly, the person is acquitted. Water Adjudication LawIt is divided into hot water and cold water, hot water: just put your hand into the boiling water, then bandage it, and after three days, the injury will be examined to determine whether the person is guilty or not guilty;Cold water cutting is to throw a person into a pond to see if he sinks or floats to judge whether he is guilty or not. Duel methodIt is to fight a judicial duel, and it is believed that God will intervene in the duel and make the guilty lose.
At this time, you will find that this so-called divine judgment is completely a stroke of luck, what does this have to do with justice and injustice?The ancients were too stupid, right?
In fact, the ancients also knew that this kind of thing was lucky, unless it was a special case, and an unclear case had to have an explanation, and the ancients would not use the divine judgment. Otherwise, people will not be able to form stable expectations about what is the proper rules of behavior, which is very detrimental to the healthy functioning of society.
Therefore, the ancients had particularly strict rules on what kind of cases could enter the divine judgment. When encountering such a case that is difficult to adjudicate, the prosecution and defense will debate fiercely whether the case meets the rules of entering the law of divine judgment. At this time, the debate has nothing to do with the right and wrong of the plaintiff and the defendant, but only with the judgment of abstract rules. Even if the judgment law is entered, when the defendant has finished grabbing the soldering iron and three days after the injury examination, there is a set of strict judgment standards, and the prosecution and defense will also have a heated debate on this basis, arguing whether the injury heals quickly.
In other words, as far as the divine judgment is concerned, the stage of the divine judgment is not actually important, the divine judgment is mainly given in the name of legitimacy, and what really matters is the intense and strict rule debate process before and after the divine judgment. The judgment of the village elders or nobles was initially not based on the law, but on the local morals.
In this way, you can see how law gradually grew out of religion. If there were no divine judgments, people would usually decide cases according to morality;And it is from the divine judgment that the debates about purely abstract rules grow, and these debates are the archetypes of judicial debates. In judicial debates, it is not really important what justice the law is supposed to uphold, but how the rules are understood and applied.
Therefore, in the process of applying the law of divine judgment, in addition to moral customs, laws that are only about abstract rules gradually appear. Based on law, the human order is no longer limited to the central element of politics, which is power. Power can only be resolved by subjugation, but no one can guarantee that they will always be the strongest, even the strongest will have a time to nap, and the moment of napping is the moment when the strongest becomes the weakest.
Therefore, as long as the victory is won by strength, human beings will never be able to attain peace, and until human beings can find a way to win by rules, they will begin to obtain peaceful order.
Law originated in religion and has evolved into a complex and abstract system of rules.
Lawyer Profile. 
Lawyer Zhang Haiyang
Founding partner, chief lawyer and director of Beijing Nengyang Law Firm.
Former member of the CPPCC Yuyang District, Yulin City, Shaanxi Province.
Arbitrator of Yulin Arbitration Commission, Shaanxi Province.
Outstanding member of the Professional Committee of Beijing Lawyers Association.
Former chairman of a listed company in China.
He is good at solving and handling various legal issues such as compliance business, corporate comprehensive business, investment and financing, intellectual property rights, litigation and arbitration, etc., and has a strong sensitivity to national policies and supervision, and has the ability to identify risks and have compliance awareness.