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In ancient China, the first comprehensive criminal code was the Tang Code, created in 624 AD in the Tang Dynasty. The following is a list of ancient legal codes in chronological order: Cuneiform law. The code of law found at Ebla (2400 BC) Code of Urukagina (2380–2360 BC) Code of Ur-Nammu, king of Ur (c. 2050 BC). Copies with slight ...
For example, one code begins, "these are the ordinances which the wise men established at Exeter, by the counsel of King Æthelstan". [13] Royal law codes were written to address specific situations and were intended to be read by people who were already familiar with the law. [6] The first law code was the Law of Æthelberht (c. 602), which ...
First page of the 1804 original edition of the Napoleonic Code. A code of law, also called a law code or legal code, is a systematic collection of statutes.It is a type of legislation that purports to exhaustively cover a complete system of laws or a particular area of law as it existed at the time the code was enacted, by a process of codification. [1]
The Salic law (/ ˈ s æ l ɪ k / or / ˈ s eɪ l ɪ k /; Latin: Lex salica), also called the Salian law, was the ancient Frankish civil law code compiled around AD 500 by Clovis, the first Frankish King. The written text is in Late Latin, [1] and contains some of the earliest known instances of Old Dutch. [2]
Ancient Sumer's Code of Ur-Nammu was compiled circa 2050–1230 BC, and is the earliest known surviving civil code.Three centuries later, the Babylonian king Hammurabi enacted the set of laws named after him.
The code is attributed to Æthelberht, and for this reason is dated to that king's reign (c. 590–616×618). [3] Æthelberht's code is thought to be both the earliest law code of any kind in any Germanic language and the earliest surviving document written down in the English language.
The title, Latin for "the law is king", subverts the traditional formulation rex lex ("the king is law"). [38] James Harrington wrote in Oceana (1656), drawing principally on Aristotle's Politics, that among forms of government an "Empire of Laws, and not of Men" was preferable to an "Empire of Men, and not of Laws". [39]
The Code was thought to be the earliest Mesopotamian law collection when it was rediscovered in 1902—for example, C. H. W. Johns' 1903 book was titled The Oldest Code of Laws in the World. [31] The English writer H. G. Wells included Hammurabi in the first volume of The Outline of History , and to Wells too the Code was "the earliest known ...