In 1935, Shi Jianqiao shot Sun Chuanfang in a Buddhist hall in Tianjin to avenge her father, then scattered leaflets and surrendered. From her decade-long pursuit of revenge through three levels of Republican courts and a Nationalist pardon, this episode asks how traditional filial duty fared under modern criminal law.
What can one person do when the state uses textbooks to reshape memory of war? This episode follows historian Saburō Ienaga's three lawsuits over 32 years against revisions to accounts of Japan's wartime aggression, the Nanjing Massacre, and Unit 731, examining the boundaries among state screening, academic freedom, and responsibility for war.
Focusing on birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment, this episode starts from the Supreme Court's then-recent procedural ruling, Wong Kim Ark, and the doctrine's history. It traces how the Trump administration challenged the principle through an executive order and litigation, and examines the contest between jus soli and jus sanguinis.
Under Wu Zetian, an act of filial revenge brought Confucian duty into direct conflict with state law. Through the case of Xu Yuanqing, this episode introduces the Tang Code and judicial system, revisits the century-spanning debate between Chen Zi'ang and Liu Zongyuan, and asks whether state power and moral justice can coexist.
Drawing on Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order, this episode moves from Qin unification and the Qin legal system to the revival of Roman law, Bologna, and natural law. It compares China's early centralized state with Europe's later development of law and accountable government, asking how state power, the rule of law, and accountability together make modern political order.