The English version of our website is named "the New Legalist". What, then, is "Legalism"? 
 
  Legalism or Legism is a state philosophy that was scorned by the Confucians but won over by the founding of the Chinese empire and deeply influenced the Chinese state that was nominally Confucian.

  The objective of the legist state philosophers (fajia 法家) was to strengthen the position of the state ruler against the subordinated feudal lords (marquises or dukes) and later against neighboring states during the Warring States period . An important instrument of the ruler's power were the ministers and officials that replaced the feudal lords as a bureaucratic elite. The ruler had to employ the ministers by using their strength for himself, and by encountering their intrigues against him. Furthermore, other bureaucratic measures like unifying weights and measures, promulgating law codexes, registering households and collecting taxes, and by recruiting men for official work and for the army.

  The most important representants of legist state philosophy were Guan Zhong (管仲), Shang Yang (商鞅) and Han Fei (韓非).

  By these measures, states adopting legist practices were able to become stronger than their neighbors and to win hegemony over the feudal states of the Warring States era, first Qi , later Qin(Ch'in)  that finally founded the first empire of China. The First Emperor of Qin  is said to have burned Confucian books and buried alive Confucian scholars (It's not true according to famous Chinese history book Shih-chi by Ssu-ma Ch’ien). For this reason legalism was for a long time disregarded as the state philosophy of immoral rulers and reckless ministers like the Qin chancellor Li Si (李斯). Only during the Later Han Dynasty  when the Confucian state disengaged under the influence of eunuchs, consort clans and military governors, legism was again considered by scholars like Xun Yue (荀悅)  as being a state philosophy effective enough to strengthen the position of the emperor and the central government.

  In fact, the Han Dynasty had taken over most legist bureaucratic institutions and ideology of the Qin Dynasty and altered them to meet the new demands of a unified China.