Code of Hammurabi By Cheryl Quartey

The code of Hammurabi was made long ago when the ruler of Babylonia created laws to keep people in check and to uphold justice.

Code of Hammurabi

Some of the laws King Hammurabi’s laws made sense but most of the

time these laws were cruel.

Law 6 Law 6: If anyone steal the property of a temple or of the court, he shall be put to death, and also the one who receives the stolen thing from him shall be put to death. My thoughts: This law was fair because stealing from a place of religion is not good, but if you are the one who receives it, you could very well be innocent. So this law (to as far as my thinking) was half and half cruel but fair.

Law 51 51. If he have no money to repay, then he shall pay in corn or sesame in place of the money as rent for what he received from the merchant, according to the royal tariff. My thoughts: This law is very fair, if you can’t pay up trade up!

Law 192 192. If a son of a paramour or a prostitute say to his adoptive father or mother: "You are not my father, or my mother," his tongue shall be cut off. My thoughts: this law is cruel because even though technically the one who gave birth to you his biological parent, they might not wish for others to know that he doesn’t have a good faithful mother. I have no idea what those are but context clues led me to this conclusion.

Your not My Mother!!

Summary:Why laws were harsh! I think Hammurabi’s laws were HARSH but fair. His laws usually included corporal or capital

punishment and that on its own is harsh. His laws also could put people way down into debt if they couldn’t pay. Though his laws were harsh so he could keep his people in check. Keeping people in check doesn’t mean killing them for wrong doing.

Summary:How has Code of Hammurabi influenced today’s laws and justice.

These were some of the first REAL REAL laws that everybody followed. Even today we have laws and some of them are inspired from hammurabi’s laws, but they are not as cruel. If hammurabi hadn’t of made his code, we might not have had an efficient way better than laws to have justice.