Harsh rule by law

Draco (Δράκων, late 7th century BC) was the lawgiver of Athens' first written code. In 621 BC he systematized the existing oral customary law and inscribed it on stone pillars, compiling the first codified law — known as the thesmoi. According to Plutarch's Life of Solon, Draco's law prescribed death for nearly every offense, even the theft of a cabbage. When someone asked why he was so severe, Draco is said to have replied that even small crimes deserved death, and for greater ones he could find no harsher penalty than that. The Athenian orator Demades remarked that Draco's laws were "written in blood, not ink." When Solon reformed the constitution in 594 BC, he repealed nearly all of Draco's code, keeping only the homicide laws. In the early 19th century the English word draconian, originally meaning "as severe as Draco," settled into the adjective sense of "excessively strict, mercilessly punitive." Though Draco was the rival whose work was overturned, in language it is he who outlived the rest — the phrase "draconian measure" is still current today in political, legal, and economic debate.

Eomhyeong-junbeop (嚴刑峻法) is the signature doctrine of the Legalist school (Fajia, 法家) of Warring States China. Shang Yang (商鞅, 390–338 BC) of the state of Qin reformed the realm through his "reform of the laws" (bianfa, 變法). He enforced rigid statutes: branding the forehead of anyone who scattered ashes in the street, mandating the separation of households among parents and brothers, and collective punishment of entire families. His decrees were applied without exception — when even the crown prince broke the law, Shang Yang punished the prince's tutor in his stead. Yet Shang Yang himself, after the death of Duke Xiao of Qin, was put to death by his opponents through the punishment of dismemberment by chariots (juliexing, 車裂刑 — the limbs bound to four chariots and torn apart) — in effect, killed by the very law he had made. Han Feizi (韓非子, 280–233 BC) gave eomhyeong-junbeop its theory in his eponymous work: "Rewards must surely be given, and punishments must surely fall" (信賞必罰). "Only when the people fear the law is the state well governed." This doctrine, put into practice by Qin Shi Huang, became the driving force that unified China — yet within fifteen years the Qin dynasty fell. By the Han dynasty, reflecting on "the failure of Legalism," rulers fused Confucianism with Legalism into the balance of "Confucian without, Legalist within" (外儒內法), which became the basic framework of East Asian political order for two thousand years.