>>>>Dr. Harper: "If a man puts out another man's eye, his eye too shall be taken out."
An eye for an eye. Where does it come from? It's in the Bible of course, but before it
was in the Bible it was in the law code of Hammurabi, one of the earliest written law
codes to survive. In this lecture we'll explore the very beginnings of written law and the
principles of justice that it contains. The earliest written law codes come from Mesopotamia,
the ancient Near East, the land between the rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers,
which were the cradle of civilization. Human civilization is thousands of years old. Humans
invented agriculture something like 10 to 12,000 years ago, and agriculture was the
foundation for large and complex states, for societies that had complex forms of social
organization and permanent institutions, permanent forms of authority and power. Now long before
humans formed states they lived together in societies and those early human societies
had their version of laws; they had customs. But the change to agriculture and the rise
of states and especially the rise of complex states like those in ancient Mesopotamia,
meant that laws could be made: rules that were enforced by the state. The earliest written
law codes that we know of go back to the 3rd millennium BC. The code of Ur-Nammu dates
to 2100 BC, but it's largely fragmentary. The more famous and justly famous law code
of Hammurabi dates back to around 1780 BC. That is, that it is written as long before
the birth of Christ as Benjamin Franklin say, is after the birth of Christ. It's the law
code of the King Hammurabi, King of Babylonia, one of the early civilizations between the
rivers in the Near East. And the law code of Hammurabi preserves for us our earliest
written evidence for a large-scale legal code. And writing is an important part of this because
law, written law, requires one of the great technological innovations in all of human
history, writing itself: forms of putting down ideas and words into permanent form.
And it's in ancient Mesopotamia that both large-scale state societies and writing are
invented. And it's because of these great inventions that we're able to witness the
earliest law codes that are known to us, law codes like the code of Hammurabi. The code
of Hammurabi was found at the beginning of the 20th century by a French archaeologist
who was exploring in what's now Iran. And he came upon a, the remains of the city of
Susa where was preserved on a giant stele the law code of Hammurabi, an astonishing
collection of laws that date back to the 18th century BC and preserve over 280 laws that
were enforced in this society. The laws are enforced by Hammurabi, who declares in a prologue
to his law code to be chosen by the God Marduk, to be King of the Babylonians. And he announces
that he is promulgating this law code in order to protect the justice of the oppressed. And
in fact, this is a recurrent theme throughout the history of law; that law should be just,
and its uniquely, its distinctly important that in this law code it is enacted in the
nature, in the name of, the oppressed. Here you have a king who is claiming to seek justice
by enacting a code of laws that protect the oppressed. And it's a remarkable series of
over 280 laws that include rules for procedure, rules for contracts, rules for family law.
That include corrective justice, to use Aristotle's terms, that include rules like an eye for
an eye, a bone for a bone. This is a legal principle called lex talionis. Lex talionis,
an eye for an eye, the principle that the crime, the punishment should fit the crime
in a literal and exact sense. An idea that corrective justice should inflict on the wrongdoer
a punishment that is precisely and literally equal to the wrongdoing that he has perpetrated.
An eye for an eye is embodied in this set of legal codes. But you'll also see other
kinds of laws: corrective laws like an eye for an eye, but also rules that we would consider
to be about liability. And in fact this is one of the most interesting parts of the entire
legal code of Hammurabi, what is really a primitive law of liability. Liability is actually
a complex type of problem, because it means that someone is responsible for something
that they necessarily didn't intend to happen. Liability, which is closely connected with
the concept of negligence, means that someone has behaved in a way that makes them deserving
of some kind of penalty or punishment or retribution for something that they have done, even if
they didn't intend the outcome that happened. And the specific example that's given in the
law code of Hammurabi involves a goring ox. Now you may not have known it, but some of
the most sophisticated legal principles in all of human history arose out of the problem
of goring oxes. Well what is a goring ox, you ask? A goring ox is an ox that gores,
an ox that's given to the problem of goring. [laughs] It's not a problem we face in our
society but in ancient Babylonian society, which was an agricultural society, it must
have been quite a serious problem because the law code of Hammurabi says that if you
have a goring ox that you don't fence and it gores your neighbor's oxen, then you are
liable. You are responsible for retribution. In other words it says, imagine this. There
are situations in the world that will happen against or despite anyone's intention, sometimes
accidents occur and no one is responsible. However, sometimes events occur for which
someone must be held responsible. So if you have a goring ox, an ox that you know is liable
to tear out the insides of your neighbor's oxen and you don't take action to restrain
that ox, then you are liable, you are responsible, you are negligent if you don't. And this is
already enshrined in the law code of Hammurabi.