Consolidated statutes (Themiclesia)

Consolidated statutes (併律, bjêngh-rjut; or 併令, bjêngh-ringh) are statutes that merge existing statutes on a single subject, simplifying interreference and interpretation.

Under the priniple of legal continuity between political dynasties, the legal framework of each previous dynasty is continued into the new one as though the throne had not moved between dynasties. On a practical level, this was necessary to prevent unrest amidst political tension and to ensure the new dynasty would not lose control in the meantime. This means the Themiclesian corpus of laws was expanded continually for centuries, some of the oldest parts dating to antiquity. Courtly jurists generally preferred revival of old laws rather than drafting new ones, since the body of precedents (which had legal force) could be reused, answering previously-resolved questions when the new law went into effect. However, before the modern period, Themiclesian legislation generally dealt with problems as they arose, rather than setting forth a comprehensive set of rules at the beginning. This created a vast quantity of statutes stored chronologically in archives, which would be combed every time the gamut of laws on any specific subject was required. Not only was the process of physically locating relevant laws tiresome, it was also challenging to make valid interpretations when laws apparently contradicted each other.

In the late 5th century (probably between 492 and 495), King Ngjon of Rjang (梁元王, rjang-ngjon-tegh) presided over an effort to collate all penal laws to date into the Penal Code (律, rjut), non-penal laws into the Administrative Orders (令, ringh). Laws were sorted thematically into 30 categories in each then numbered chronologically, by the regnal year and order in which they were passed. Precedents (故事, kah-dzrje′) were compiled as well. This implicitly created index of laws allowing easier reference (e.g. the 40th statute of King Ngjon's sixth year). However, within each division statutes were still arranged chronologically, and in the following centuries related statutes could still be stretched far apart. In the 8th century, a new system to connect them was introduced, collating laws according to the specific need of the bureaucrat, e.g. if an official overseeing bronzesmiths wanted to know all the laws pertaining to bronzework, he could ask the Tribunes to give him a list of all known laws pertaining to that topic, from the mining to casting, by their index numbers; that bureaucrat's successors could reference the same collection. The new method was more flexible and topical and remained the dominant method of sorting a sea of laws into more manageable and relevant portions. This was called the Knot Method (節法, kik-pjap) and remains the dominant method of sorting laws until the early 1800s.

While indexed "knots" solved the problem of relevance, interpreting the collated laws was still the duty of the bureaucrat that enforced them. When originally passed, these exceedingly terse statutes addressed a specific problem that existed in a certain context, and how a statute should be applied when others have changed or new ones enacted is not always obvious. After laws have accumulated for centuries, tracing the applicability of each statute became a learned skill. Themiclesian jurists have therefore resisted the changing of names as much as possible, to ensure that extant laws do not lose their textual referents (somewhat like broken hyperlinks on the Internet). This also gave rise to the doctrine of historic textualism, asserting that one term has only one meaning throughout the entire corpus of laws, or at least one "knot" of them. 15th century Chǒndoists, in their criticism of Themiclesia, complained that "laws are extremely easy to read and extremely difficult to understand." They pointed out that this allowed lawyers to defraud common people very easily, since laws often are interpreted in esoteric, albeit logical, ways. Nevertheless, the ability to interpret diffuse laws was foundational to all administrative skills, and its highly technical nature was a formidable barrier to public service; in the absence of official schools, these skills were often passed from generation to generation, contributing to the rise of an administrative aristocracy that has dominated Themiclesia virtually since its founding. Some historians consider Themiclesia an "aristocracy of knowledge".

The establishment of Tyrannian colonies in Columbia and the independence of Camia in 1703 sparked a series of changes to Themiclesian jurisprudence. First, the Supreme Court was established to deal with causes between foreigners and nationals. Very soon, foreigners complained that Themiclesian laws often produced unexpected results that were against the rights they believed they had. Up to this point, the concept of "rights" was very limited, since a judgment only need be made according to statutes, not necessarily with respect to rights. The Themiclesian court initially ignored these complaints, ordering foreign litigants to seek better legal assistance. But in 1731 a Camian lawyer, trained in both Tyrannian and Themiclesian law, wrote that the primary fault of Themiclesian law was caprice: since the laws had no theme ("spirit behind the words", in his original usage), it was difficult to find out what the intent and applicability of the law is. He added that, if laws were passed with a coherent idea in mind, then much of this "caprice" could be removed. Tyrannians and Hallians cited his writings to the Themiclesian court, which responded by publishing digests of the law, which used cases to illustrate how different statutes were interpreted in combination with each other. By 1750, these digests were widely taken as authoritative statements about the laws, even though Themiclesian judges emphasized that digests do not illustrate the law exhaustively. During the late imperial period (1703 – 1797), Themiclesians themselves called for the government to "consolidate the laws", but the Great Settlement of 1801 restored the supremacy of the Civil Service and aristocracy, which immediately shelved efforts to simplify and modernize laws. This was not done so much for sheer conservatism, but to protect the employment of aristocratic civil servants whose task was to opine on laws; this was deduced because the government found no issue with passing new and otherwise progressive laws, anything which increased the volume of work done.

Starting in 1845, the Liberal government took up the shelved idea of statute consolidation and set to work first in the armed forces. The navy was the first to have its statutes consolidated. The number of statutes was reduced from 28,290 to 102, but the number of requests for clarification sent to the Tribunes dropped from 1,328 to 72 in 1849. The drop in disputes occurred because many legal principles which were implied or embodied by statutes and precedents but never actually legislated were formally written down. At the same time, the navy was able to reduce its college of lawyers from 121 positions to 40. Admiral Teng, who led the navy at that time, commented that the new laws made the "ghosts cry and gods howl", since without ambiguities and convoluted interpretations, the juridical department, compared to "ghosts and gods", i.e. superstitious entities, instantly lost much of its power. On the other hand, complex accounting rules that have also accumulated over centuries were also consolidated, which reduced the power of the accounting department. Conservatives decried these changes as weakening of civilian control of the military, which the Liberals never addressed. In 1915, Yutaka Ueda of the Imperial Dayashinese Army said that "civilian control is necessary, but few nations have imposed civilian control to such an extreme as Themiclesia. The Themiclesian Navy had matured over seven centuries to know its own needs well enough to enact its own rules and tried to convince the government to respect its expertise, but this backfired and led to even more rules imposed from Kien-k'ang and scores of civil servants to enforce them, and this antagonism between the juridical-aristocratic-civil-bureaucracy, though ostensibly well-meaning, and the professional military leadership may have contributed to their weakness before other imperial powers between 1750 and 1800."

See also

• Themiclesia
• Historic textualism