The responsible judicature in ancient China means that judicial personnel must be responsible for their own actions. In Legalist thought, the theory of responsible judicature originated from the theory of responsible administration, because judicial power and administrative power were not separated at that time. The theory of responsible administration requires that the subject of administrative law enforcement must bear responsibility for his own actions. For this reason, the Qin Dynasty established a perfect supervision system to supervise the administrative law enforcement and investigate the illegal acts of the law enforcement subjects. At that time, judicial power was a part of executive power, so the supervision of administrative power included the supervision of judicial power. If the subject of supervision finds that judicial personnel have the problem of judicial injustice, they will punish them. It can be said that the supervision system was the premise of the establishment of the judicial responsibility system at that time. The judicial responsibility system of the Qin Dynasty is groundbreaking, as exemplified by the charges such as not being straight stipulated in the Law of the Qin Dynasty. Responsible judicature is also a kind of judicature of governing officials. Legalists advocate governing officials but not people and require that the style of officials should be brought into the track of the rule of law.
The main content of this paragraph is the origin of responsible judicature and Legalist thought in Ancient China.