# Modern political readings record wuwei used to tell subjects not to contend in courts

Date: 1963

## The fact

Lau’s 1963 introduction and standard political readings of the Daodejing record that ‘not contending’ was later preached as a duty not to litigate or resist officials.

## Context

A maxim against aggressive war is not the same as a ban on petitions. Collapsing them is a [judicial-independence](/drivers/justice-judicial-independence-erosion) harm in reception. Confidence stays medium because the mechanism is commentarial.

[Laozi](/people/laozi) 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, or edition pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: D. C. Lau, Tao Te Ching (Penguin 1963 tradition; public scans of Lau’s text) (https://archive.org/details/taoteching00laot; Internet Archive / Penguin tradition).

## Significance

Do not write that silk books closed the courts. Do record the later sermon.

Do not write that silk books closed the courts. Do record the later sermon.

## 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.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Laozi: https://factrail.ai/people/laozi

## Drivers

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

## Sources

- https://archive.org/details/taoteching00laot
- https://iep.utm.edu/laozi/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/lz-wuwei-against-litigation