Case of Kong Stabbing the Maidservant for Stealing Money

During the Han Dynasty, a maidservant belonging to a man named Kong stole money. Kong's wife, angered by the theft, stabbed and injured the maidservant. The case was brought before authorities, raising the question of whether the wife had committed a punishable assault. Some officials argued that because the maidservant was the husband's property, not the wife's, the wife's act constituted an unlawful injury to another person's servant and should be treated as a crime. The renowned Confucian scholar Dong Zhongshu was consulted to adjudicate the matter using the principles of the Spring and Autumn Annals. He interpreted the Confucian doctrine that a wife is subject to her husband, concluding that the husband's maidservant should be regarded as the wife's own maidservant. Therefore, disciplining the maidservant was an internal household matter, not a criminal offense.

Dong Zhongshu ruled that the wife was not guilty. He reasoned that according to the Confucian principle of a wife's subordination to her husband, the husband's maidservant was equivalent to the wife's maidservant, and the wife's act of wounding her was akin to disciplining her own servant, thus not constituting a crime.

Whether a husband's maidservant should be legally considered the wife's own servant, thereby granting the wife the right to punish the maidservant without criminal liability, or whether the maidservant was exclusively the husband's property, making the wife's stabbing an unlawful assault.

The case exemplified the Han dynasty practice of "adjudicating cases by the Spring and Autumn Annals," integrating Confucian moral principles directly into judicial reasoning. It reinforced the patriarchal family structure and the doctrine of "wife following husband" in legal thought, influencing the development of later Chinese laws that upheld the hierarchy within households and the use of Confucian ethics to determine criminal intent and culpability.