Liberty and Order: Legal Interests in China's Domestic Crime Legislation and Amendment

Abstract

The family is an independent community, in which members have closer life ties and deeper subjective emotions than ordinary social members. The diversity of the internal relationships within the family and the different expressions of family ethics determine the pluralistic normative construction of criminal law when it intervenes in the family. However, with the transformation of the social structure, the function of the family has gradually declined. The traditional Chinese society's "family-oriented" ideology has fallen behind, and the past value judgment of "emphasizing order and disregarding freedom" does not conform to the social values of the people. Firstly, in terms of the configuration of penalties, the statutory penalties for domestic crimes are lighter than those for similar crimes, which conflicts with the increasing sense of equality, rights, and modern family concepts in society. Secondly, in the judicial practice process, the judicial organs ignore unfair interest arrangements, attach importance to outdated value judgments, overemphasize departmental interests, and infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of vulnerable groups. These behaviors all go against the values of ordinary people. This article takes the crimes of purchasing trafficked women and child abuse in traditional Chinese family crimes as examples, combined with current social trends and the transformation of traditional family values and order. Based on the unique and complex features of the protected legal interests in family crimes, it balances the values of order protection and human rights protection, faces up to the connotation and extension changes of domestic crimes in the new era, and establishes the family law theory of criminal law.