Wu Jingxiong (or John C.H. Wu, 1899–1986) was among the most influential Chinese jurists and legal thinkers of the twentieth century, and played an important role in the drafting of the 1946 Constitution of the Republic of China. Wu studied with leading authorities in the United States and in Germany, was a judge and dean of the Comparative Law School of China in Shanghai, and in the 1930s was the chairman of the Constitutional Drafting Committee of the Legislative Yuan. Wu’s remarks in these two excerpts should be seen in the context of ongoing debates in the late 1920s and early 1930s about the way in which a constitution ought to protect rights. The Nationalist government had promulgated a Provisional Constitution in 1931—at least on paper, meeting the demand of Hu Shi from 1929 (see Text 21)—and work had begun in 1932 on drafting a permanent constitution. The first complete draft was finished in 1933 by Wu. In this draft, and in the eventual final version, the people’s rights were allowed to be limited by simple legislation, so long as the restrictive laws were aimed at one of four vague social goals. Wu sees himself as implementing the ideas of Sun Yatsen, and he is clearly also influenced by the legal positivist conception of rights that he encountered in America in the 1920s. Wu sees rights as historical and relative: they are not universal, but have to suit the times and the needs of each individual society.
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