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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 4 pages research paper that contrasts and compares various ancient legal codes that have survived to the present, specifically Aristotle's Politics, the Torah, the Code of Hammurabi and the Roman Twelve Tables. The writer argues that these legal perspectives share common themes, but evolved slowly toward less retributive measures. Bibliography lists 4 sources.
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4 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khlegcod.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
legal order designed to enforce its already existing societal standards. The legal codes that ancient societies devised served to codify the social mandates of their cultures. An examination
of these codes shows that the worldview of these early Mediterranean cultures tended to follow similar lines, and, in general, becoming progressively more humanistic and less retributive in their legal
standards. Written in the 18th century BCE, the Code of Hammurabi is one of the most significant surviving law codes from the ancient Middle East (Brians, 1998). One copy
of this code shows the Hammurabi receiving the law from the Mesopotamian god of justice, Shamash. As this suggests, the code of Hammurabi based its legitimacy on divine revelation, which
is also true of Hebrew law. Hammurabis Code is composed of laws that probably evolved over an extended period of time. These laws tell the modern reader a great deal
about attitudes and daily life in ancient Babylon (Brians, 1998). The laws indicate that men had more power in this society than women, but women also had rights. For
example, law 142 indicates that if a woman felt that her husband was mistreating her, leaving her alone often and neglecting her, and no fault could be found with the
woman, then she was free to take back her dowry and return to her fathers house (Brians, 1998). While this sounds quite humanistic, there was also a severely retributive
quality to many of the laws, quite literally an "eye for an eye." Law 196 reads that if a "(noble-)man put out the eye of another (noble-)man, his eyes shall
be put out" (Brians, 1998). As the qualification of "noble" implies, Babylonian law distinguished between the various classes. Law 198 indicates that if an aristocrat puts out the eye of
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