# Shuihudi and later Qin legal manuscripts enter the scholarly record

Date: 1975

## The fact

From 1975, Qin legal and administrative bamboo slips (notably Shuihudi) were archaeologically recovered and published, showing harsh but written law. The First Emperor did not publish the slips.

## Context

Written law can be an improvement on pure whim and still be extractive. The driver here marks judicial harshness, not the absence of text. Other rows store punishments.

[Qin Shi Huang](/people/qin-shi-huang) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official museum/encyclopedia/agency pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum (https://www.bmy.com.cn/; Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum).

## Significance

A slip is not a human-rights charter. It is a dated legal culture.

A slip is not a human-rights charter. It is a dated legal culture.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Qin Shi Huang: https://factrail.ai/people/qin-shi-huang

## Drivers

- Judicial independence erosion (court capture): https://factrail.ai/drivers/justice-judicial-independence-erosion

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Qin-Shi-Huang
- https://www.bmy.com.cn/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/cn-qin-legal-code-fragments