College Of Wisconsin Law Faculty

Ancient Egyptian law, dating way again to 3000 BC, was based mostly on the concept of Ma’at and characterised by tradition, rhetorical speech, social equality and impartiality. By the twenty second century BC, the ancient Sumerian ruler Ur-Nammu had formulated the first law code, which consisted of casuistic statements (“if … then …”). Around 1760 BC, King Hammurabi additional developed Babylonian law, by codifying and inscribing it in stone. Hammurabi positioned a number of copies of his law code all through the dominion of Babylon as stelae, for the entire public to see; this became generally identified as the Codex Hammurabi. The most intact copy of these stelae was found in the 19th century by British Assyriologists, and has since been fully transliterated and translated into various languages, together with English, Italian, German, and French. In 1934, the Austrian thinker Hans Kelsen continued the positivist …