The first legal promulgations and lawcodes from ancient Mesopotamia and the Hittites to Exodus and Deuteronomy, Archaic Greece, and Egypt, and the origins of jurisprudence. What classes are regulated by what institutions? These are the traditions behind Western concepts of law, ultimately arising from ancient theologies.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students: Graduate and law students will present, as though for a conference, a coherent set of provisions (e.g., sexual torts in the Middle Assyrian Laws) with an analysis of theories of compensation or punishment, in close reading. They will write a final paper addressing such a bloc, or principle, through lawcodes, case records, and narratives through canon law or into Greek and/or Roman traditions.
Athena Title
The Origins of Law
Prerequisite
Sophomore or junior or senior standing or permission of department
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
Students will learn the promulgations and analyze the legal class structure of Sumerian, Babylonian, Hittite, Assyrian, Israelite and Archaic Greek societies and in written work show an ability to apply this knowledge to the reading of narratives involving legal principles or issues of justice.
Students will develop an ability to identify conflict between state law and traditional practice (as in Antigone), and circumstances necessitating that conflict.
Students will learn to identify principles of jurisprudence and target areas underlying particular codes, and how to approach the problem of their social embedment.
Students will be guided to identify what they need to know in order to form hypotheses about the relation between control of law-making and political processes pertinent to particular cultures at particular times.
Topical Outline
Sumerian lawcodes and the start of royal regulation
Pre-Hammurabi Akkadian law (primarily, Eshnunna)
Hammurabi and the status of legal promulgations
The Hittite laws and social conventions
Middle Assyrian laws
Biblical law: JE, the Covenant Code, Deuteronomic adaptation of the Covenant Code, Deuteronomy, and the Priestly Source
Early Cretan lawcodes and myths of nomothetoi (lawgivers) in Greece
Drago, Lycurgus, Solon
Implications for subsequent codes and conversations -- Ezra, Udjahoreset, Twelve Tables, Mishnah
