Fǎ-Jiā (法家), or more rarely Xìng-Míng (刑名), usually (although inaccurately) translated as Legalism is a classical school of Chinese philosophy. Termed in the Han Dynasty, it groups thinkers crucial to laying the "intellectual and ideological foundations of the traditional Chinese bureaucratic empire". Often compared with modern social sciences, they have been regarded by the Chinese as having three tendencies, synthesized by Han Fei: the enforcement of law, the manipulation of statecraft, and the exercise of power, articulating political technique that would ultimately form guiding principles for the First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang. Highly effective in the short run, their dismissiveness of traditional culture, morality and "anti-ministerial" approach earned them enmity, and with the fall of the Qin dynasty the imperial administration would often be further overlaid with Confucian ideology and customs. "Legalism" remained highly influential in administration, policy and legal practice. Endorsement peaked under Mao Zedong, hailed as a “progressive” intellectual current. Far in advance of the rest of the world until almost the end of the eighteenth century, Sinologists Herrlee G. Creel and other scholars find influence of Chinese administration in Europe by the twelfth century, for example, in Fredrick II's promulgations, characterized as the "birth certificate of modern bureaucracy". Modernly the "Legalist School" has been considered by some the Realpolitikal thought of the ancient Chinese, often compared with Machiavelli. Angus Charles Graham called the "Legalists" the "first political philosophers in China 'to start not from how society ought to be but how it is'". Their writings being "devoid of overarching moral considerations" Creel and Arthur Waley used the term "Realist" to describe them.

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