Eight Deliberations

Eight Deliberations (simplified Chinese: 八议; traditional Chinese: 八議; pinyin: Bā Yì), also translated as Eight Considerations, Eight Discussions, Eight Discussed Cases or Eight Precedents, was a set of principles used by traditional Chinese law in order to lessen legal punishment on the royalties, nobles and members of upper classes.

The Eight Deliberations were established by the Wei Dynasty during the Three Kingdoms period and originated from similar regulations in the Rites of Zhou. These suggested that criminals qualified under the following eight conditions could be considered for a commutation of sentence:

The earliest records of the whole set of Eight Deliberations existing nowadays can be found in the Tang Code, with its Article 7 exactly entitled the same name. According to it, permission from the emperor was required before any kind of interrogation or judgement could be carried out towards the offenders of the legally favored categories. However, as pointed out in Article 8, the legal privilege was not applicable to cases involving violation of the Ten Abominations.

Since the Eight Deliberations was introduced, all of the following Chinese dynasties maintained the installment of this system to their law.

Deliberation for Relatives of the Emperor (simplified Chinese: 议亲; traditional Chinese: 議親; pinyin: Yì Qīn) included the relatives of the emperor of the sixth degree of mourning and closer. In addition, the emperor's paternal grandmother's and his mother's relatives within the fifth or closer degree of mourning, the empress's relatives within the fourth or closer degree of mourning were also considered.

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