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CLAS 275 / Law and Trials in Ancient Society Law, Justice and Society: liberal arts approach “A Law, Justice and Society program helps us to move away from just an exclusively vocational or pre-law orientation to more consciously connecting law to the liberal inquiry and critical thinking goals of undergraduate education. This is a nationwide trend. Rather than seeing law as a technical instrument, a tool to be manipulated, or as a set of facts and supposedly self-evident truths, law programs study the complex ways in which law works in society: how law affects different communities differently, how law is affected by social forces, and how law emerges out of struggles over social, political and cultural values.” See A. Sarat, “Situating Legal Scholarship in the Liberal Arts: An Introduction,” in Law in the Liberal Arts, ed. A. Sarat (Cornell University Press, 2004). What is Law? Several functions Crime & punishment Establish order / security: Contracts, business, marriage, divorce, property, insurance Constitutional law or administrative law (about the govt.) Law = A body of laws and a system of procedure Shapes and Reflects society, such as who has power Who makes law (Sources of Law)? Who judges? Gods Custom “natural law”? (e.g. human rights, universal moral principles?) What is legal can be different from what is right or moral (justice, equity). Government. Who has power? What is its source of authority? Who runs the government? Law is human, not logic; law reflects and shapes society. Terms Plaintiff vs. Defendant Litigation = suing, bring a case adjective “litigious,” as in “the ancient Athenians were very litigious as Americans are” Some Terms Civil law (private) vs. Criminal law (public) Civil law: regulates relations between citizens [civis] Criminal law: the state vs. x. (public law is larger than this, it also includes constitutional and administrative law, about public institutions) What Ancient Society will we have in this course? Where and when? Know where we are as we travel. A Brief overview Mediterranean Sea Ancient Egypt: judging scene Mesopotamia Babylon Hammurabi, king of Babylon, c. 1780 BCE Code of Hammurabi. a stele c. 7-1/2 ft. high; in Louvre Museum; found 1901 Cuneiform writing language: Akkadian. Some of Hammurabi’s laws are also found on clay tablets like this one in the Near East (one from c. 1700 BCE was recently found in Israel, e.g.) Old Babylonian Empire Greece and Crete GREECE Ancient Greece Bronze Age // time of Pharaohs in Egypt Greeks had myths about these early times 8th century BCE (700s)– first literature: Homer The city-state (polis) CLASSICAL GREECE: 5th and 4th centuries BCE Time of democracy at Athens Law Code of Gortyn (on Crete) Athens -- oratory Classical Athens – democracy Jurors at Athens WHY DID ATHENS EXECUTE SOCRATES? Rome Republic 509-44 BCE Empire 31 BCE – ? 476 AD/CE Classical period of Roman Law: c. 31 BC – 235 AD Codified (collected in a law-code) by Justinian, 533 CE Cicero 106 – 43 BCE THE ROMAN EMPIRE: Augustus, 31 BCE – CE/AD 14, the first emperor How was Jesus tried and executed? Jesus before Pontius Pilate Justinian (525-565) codified Roman law the Digest (law code): 533 AD/CE Two major systems of law in the world today Common Law tradition: especially Britain and U.S. Based on judicial precedent (previous cases). Gives more discretion to judges in deciding (based on using precedents of previous cases, and reasoning). vs. Civil Law tradition: based on a code of laws, derived from the Roman tradition of the ius civile (civil law), especially from Justinian’s Code (Corpus Iuris Civilis). More authoritarian than the common law systems; tries to spell out everything. Civil Law and Common Law systems today