Research Paper On The Code Of Hammurabi

The code of Hammurabi is known as one of the earliest and oldest legal codes. The code was established by the king hammurabi who ruled from 1793 to 1750 B.C. The code was written approximately about 1750 BC, in Mesopotamia. There are a total of two hundred eighty two laws in the code. Which range from laws that dealt with contracts to family matters such as divorce and paternity. Many of these laws have death as a punishment for committing crimes. A group of Archeologist led by a French mining engineer called Jacques Morgan discover the script in which the Hammurabi code was written on 1901 in a city called Susa which we now know as Iraq . The laws were scripted into a finger shaped black stone.

The Hammurabi law code included some laws

that gave people some type of social responsibility. The code included laws that punished people for breaking laws that betrayed what an ideal citizen should behave. For example one of the many laws of the code stated that if a buyer bought land of a miner or a slave he or she would be categorized as a thief and be executed. The buyer would be given such punishment because he should have certain knowledge to know that the property was maybe stolen. So he should act in the right way and refuse to buy the property. Another example on how the laws gave citizens social responsibility is law number 128 that states the following “If a man has taken a wife and has not executed a marriage contract. That woman is not a wife”. This shows that in order to be a respected couple and live together a man and a woman had to make the arrangements to get married. Respecting the parents was part of being a good citizen. There are a few laws that state that if you were disrespectful to your parent you would receive a punishment. Law number 192 says that if a son or a daughter says to the father that raised them “you are not my father” he or she should have his lounge cut off.
“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was a phrase that could be found on the text of the Hammurabi code.

And can be used as an example to show how could people could see the relationship between their choices or actions and the consequences that this would bring them. The phrase explains that every action that the citizens commit would have a consequence of a similar range to the crime they just committed . An example of this could be if a person murdered a citizen he or she would receive the same punishment and would be executed. All of the laws of the Hammurabi code included two parts the description of the crime and the punishment. Therefore all of the laws showed people that there was a punishment for each bad action. But the punishments hat these laws had were very severe in comparison to the crimes. Apparently there was only one punishment that was known to the Babylon people when they wrote the code which was death. There are also a set number of laws that portrayed exactly the phrase an eye for an eye. Some examples of this laws are “if a man has knocked an eye of a patrician, his eye shall be knocked out”, “if he has broken the limb of a patrician his limb shall be broken.” Or “if a patrician has knocked out a tooth out of a patrician, his tooth shall be knocked out”. This laws are an example of how some of the laws of the code did have a punishment that was equal to the crime that was

committed.
The Hammurabi code had an influence on modern day law.

The laws that we use today have had some type of influence from the Hammurabi code, but of course we had modify them so they can fit in modern times. The purpose of both was to punish people for committing crimes, but the punishments that are in the Hammurabi code are far more harsh and exaggerated than the punishments used in modern day law. The death penalty is a very controversial issue today there are many people that don’t agree with it. But in the time that the Hammurabi code was written death was a very common way of punishment. As you read the laws that were inscribed in the pillar you constantly find yourself reading “ shall be put to death”. In comparison to today where the death penalty is not used with so little moderation, like it used to be. The way in which criminals get killed when they are convicted to the death penalty has changed over the years. There were methods like the killing squad or hanging . Today the most popular method that prisons used are the lethal injections. There are three injections that contain different chemicals. The first drug is a sedative, the second is a pancuronium that is use to paralyze the inmate and at last potassium chloride that stop the inmate heart. This method is used to not caused pain to the accused, in the Hammurabi code they really didn’t care if the punishment caused pain. Another way in which modern law and the Hammurabi code are different is that we don’t

really go by the eye for an eye philosophy anymore. Which was very popular in the Hammurabi code. If you cut off someone’s hand of course you will be punish but your hand won’t be cut off. In ancient time if you cut off someone hand eye or any other body part the same time would be done to you. In other words the phrase an eye for an eye is not used so literally. Modern law also has a more wide set of punishment that the Hammurabi code lacked of. Some forms of punishment that modern law now has are parole, community service. The two forms of law also differ in the way that the law wasn’t equal between social classes. For example there is a law in the Hammurabi code that states the following “if a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out’, but if a person committed the same crime to someone from a lower class they only had to pay a fine. In today’s law the law is equal for everyone for rich and for the poor men and woman, the punishment is the same. Another way in which the two laws were different is that in the Hammurabi code the victim needed to bring the accused to court by themselves. On the other hand, in the present the victim of a crime doesn’t have such responsibility.
The Hammurabi code as well as modern law were created to establish and endorse laws that would put boundaries for people actions. Without laws people would commit offensive acts without having any type of consequence. The Hammurabi code included laws and a respected punishment that would go with it, so people could see what the consequences would be if they committed a similar crime. It also included laws that pushed people to be socially responsible