Hammurabi Code Of Laws Essay

One believes that Hammurabi’s law code emerged due to the growing number of people in the city/states that he ruled. Hammurabi created the law code to “establish law and justice in the land, and promote the welfare of the people” (McKay et al., 2014). The law code was put into place to reduce the lawlessness of the land. In a sense, to keep people from taking the law into their own hands and trying to get revenge on those who did wrong to them. Most of the codes deal with buying and selling of goods, and the trading of goods or services. There were also law codes that dealt with family life, civil and criminal crimes against one another, property rights, minimum wage for a day’s work and many others. Hammurabi believed that the punishment should …show more content…
In Hammurabi’s law code the accuser had the same burden of proof and could use evidence and witnesses to help, just as our laws are today, but in his code if things did not go right the judge, the accuser, and the accused could all be punished and put to death. Although the judge could not change his ruling, if it was found that the judge made any kind of error it was punishable by death. If the accuser did not provide proof of his accusation, he could be put to death and if the accused actually did what he was accused of he could also be put to death. Both our laws today and Hammurabi’s law code set the standards of the laws and rights of its people. The code of Hammurabi had no give in it. The law was the law and more often than not was punishable by death. Though we still have the death penalty today in some states, it is not the only punishment. Hammurabi’s code seemed more like population control. The more people punished by death the less people there were to deal with and the rest of the people were scared to do anything lest they be put to death. Today’s laws are much more permissive than the Hammurabi law