Final answer:
Under Qin's rule, the legal system intended to treat all individuals equally except the royal family, but social status, such as being a rich person or a high official, could lead to more lenient punishments than those given to poor individuals for the same crime.
Step-by-step explanation:
Under Qin rule, if a rich person and a poor person committed the same crime, the rich person might receive a lighter sentence than the poor person. This was because social status played a role in the legal system, and high officials and imperial relatives were typically favored with lesser punishments. Furthermore, the Qin legal system, while harsh and enforcing severe penalties such as bodily mutilations and death, was intended to be the same for everyone except the royal family. However, in practice, social distinctions often influenced the severity of the punishment.
Notably, during the Han dynasty, concerns were raised about the ability of the rich to commute punishments into fines, potentially harming the legalist ideal of equality under the law. Emperor Wen later replaced mutilating punishments with beatings or penal labor, emphasizing that the law applied to all, although there were doubts about the actual fairness of such enforcement.