Hammurabi laws

This essay will be a review and summary essay of some aspects of the Hammurabi Laws we discussed in class on 8/24. I will enumerate several points rather than write a connected essay.

1. We wanted to study the Laws of Hammurabi (formerly known as the Hammurabi Code) from the perspective of how a lawyer would study a series of laws, rather than how you might have looked at it in an undergraduate "Western Civ." class. To that end, I was interested in the structure of the laws, some substantive provisions, what the laws assumed in terms of complexity of prior development, how the laws might indeed build on each other, how the authority for the collection was presented. We examined the rather ambiguous carving at the top of the stela, and I concluded that it was the God Shamash giving a sceptre (signifying authority) to Hammurabi, and that the laws were the result of this prior grant of authority.

2. We don't know precisely the function of the LH. That is, we don't know if they were "the law" during any particular time in Babylon or which parts of the 300 provisions were in effect at any particular time.

3. One "lawyerlike" observation we made was from paragraph 1, the punishment for false accusation. We concluded that it was a more sophisticated law than the corresponding one from Laws of Ur-Namma (# 1) because the provision in LH assumes standards of proof, a possible history of false allegations, a sense that individuals (and not the state) "bring charges.'

4. We spoke of possible development within the LH even though the epilogue gives the impression that this is one collection. That is, the epilogue tells us that if anyone tampers with or doesn't heed the laws or "change my pronouncements," the God Anu is asked to smash his scepter and curse his destiny (p. 17) but I argued that the laws themselves may bear witness to their own development. This would mean, technically, that the law as carved on the stela is violating the principle of the epilogue--a kind of neat paradox. For example, we looked at paragraph 9 in class (reproduced here), which says that thieves will be put to death, and the one who bought the goods from the thief will recoup his loss from the estate of the condemned man. But then, paragraphs 12 tells us that when the seller goes to his fate (the situation envisioned in # 9), the buyer should get fivefold restitution from the estate of the seller. What interests me is not simply the way that the LH might give us traces of legal developement within it, but also which way the law has developed. That is, if you accept my theory on the development of the law, which is a development of which? Because #9 lays down the basic principle, it would seem that 12 was later. If this is the case, maybe there was a legal change brought on by the first "victim's rights" movement in history--where people wanted not just to be reimbursed for their loss but also, as it were, collective a "punitive" sum. Other examples of this could be cited.

5. I like the very "visual" nature in which justice was executed, at least according to the LH. In two instances, a person who is implicated in a crime will die in a way that very closely relates to his crime. For example, in # 21 a person who breaks into a house (a captial offense) will be killed and hung "in front of that very breach." Sort of an object lesson which the defendant will not quickly forget. Or, better said (since the defendant is dead), this is something which should deter like conduct. Paragraph #25 is another example of this--when a person putting out a fire steals goods from the burning house he will be thrown into the burning house as his punishment. This is the lex talionis (i.e., "eye for an eye") to almost a literal degree. I wonder how well it worked as a deterrent?

6. One paragraph in the Epilogue, which we didn't discuss, is worthy of comment. It provides, "Let any wronged man who has as a lawsuit come before the statue of me, the king of justice, and let him have my inscribed stela read aloud to him, thus may he hear my precious pronouncments and let my stela reveal the lawsuit for him; may he examine his case, may be calm his (troubled) heart.." From the perspective of law, what is this? I would argue this is a sort of "textualist" provision with an interesting twist. The "textualist" part of it is suggested by the notion that if a person looks hard enough at the laws, the stela will solve his problem for him. That is, the law, when carefully pondered and studied, reveals the answers to current legal needs. The text is therefore a supple thing, applying itself to problems that will arise as time goes on. But the words are arresting--a person realizes that if s/he studies the LH closely enough, s/he will have the answer to the lawsuit. It is almost as if the laws speak directly to the heart, almost like an authoritative sacred text, and do not need the interpretive intermediary of a judge. Of course, at other points the LH assumes the existence of judges (e.g., #5), but the paragraph quoted gives new meaning to the concept of "submitting" to the laws. Your submission to the LH means that you "take your lawsuit" to the stela, so to speak, and let it "speak" to you today.

The next essay gives you some hints at what to look at in the biblical laws of Ex. 19-23 as well as the Apology of Plato.

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