 The first to use the term fa jia was Sima Qian’s father, Sima Tan 司馬談 (d. 110 BCE). In an essay on the “essence of the six schools of thought,” Sima Tan notices that fa jia are “strict and have little kindness,” and “do not distinguish between kin and stranger, nor differentiate between noble and base: everything is determined by the standard (or law, fa).” Sima Tan criticized the Legalists’ approach as “a one-time policy that could not be constantly applied,” but also hailed the fa jia for “honoring rulers and derogating subjects, and clearly distinguishing offices so that no one can overstep [his responsibilities]” (Shiji 130: 3289–3291; for translations cf. Smith 2003: 141; Goldin 2011: 89). A century later the bibliographical category of fa jia was created. The Han librarian Liu Xiang 劉向 (79–8 BCE) identified ten texts in the Han imperial library as belonging to fa jia (Han shu 30: 1735). Thenceforth “Legalist school” remained a major category of imperial book catalogues. Since the early 20th century this term has come to be widely used for classification and analysis of early Chinese thought.