Download or read book The Mandate of Heaven and The Great Ming Code (Asian Law Series) written by Yonglin Jiang and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This companion volume to Jiang Yonglin's translation of The Great Ming Code (2005) analyzes the thought underlying the imperial legal code. Was the concept of the Mandate of Heaven merely a tool manipulated by the ruling elite to justify state power, or was it essential to their belief system and to the intellectual foundation of legal culture? What role did law play in the imperial effort to carry out the social reform programs?