What was unique about hammurabis code of laws

In recent months, in the Grenfell Tower fire in London, we saw the effects of negligent construction. At least 80 people died in a blaze that is believed to have started accidentally but that, according to expert analysis, was accelerated by the conscious use of cheap building materials that had failed safety tests. When we construct a system, ensuring that it can handle the expected pressures is insufficient.

A Babylonian builder would not have been content to make a house that was strong enough to handle just the anticipated stressors. The larger the better. In 59 mph winds, we do not want to be in a house built to withstand 60 mph winds. But our current financial systems do not incentivize people to create wide margins of safety.

Instead, they do the opposite — they encourage dangerous risk-taking. His solution? Stop offering bonuses for the risky behavior of people who will not be the ones paying the price if the outcome is bad. Taleb wrote:. In fact, all pay at systemically important financial institutions — big banks, but also some insurance companies and even huge hedge funds — should be strictly regulated. Instead, he views bonuses as asymmetric incentives. Bonuses encourage bankers to ignore the potential for Black Swan events , with the financial crisis being a prime or rather, subprime example.

Rather than ignoring these events, banks should seek to minimize the harm caused. Some career fields have a strict system of incentives and disincentives, both official and unofficial. Doctors get promotions and respect if they do their jobs well, and risk heavy penalties for medical malpractice. The same goes for military and security personnel.

They get promotions and the honor of a job well done if they succeed, and the severe disincentive of shame if they fail. Hammurabi and his advisors were unconcerned with complex laws and legalese. Copying the Code also appears to have been a popular assignment for scribes-in-training. In fact, fragments of the laws have been found on clay tablets dating to as late as the 5th century B.

Historians believe the Elamite King Shutruk-Nahhunte plundered the four-ton slab during a 12th century B. Shutruk-Nahhunte is thought to have erased several columns from the monument to make space for his own inscription, but no text was ever added. Today, the pillar is kept on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!

If one destroy the eye of a freeman or break the bone of a freeman he shall pay one gold mina. The amelu was originally an elite person with full civil rights, whose birth, marriage and death were recorded. Although he had certain privileges, he also was liable for harsher punishment and higher fines. The king and his court, high officials, professionals and craftsmen belonged to this group.

The mushkenu was a free man who may have been landless. He was required to accept monetary compensation, paid smaller fines and lived in a separate section of the city.

The ardu was a slave whose master paid for his upkeep, but also took his compensation. Ardu could own property and other slaves, and could purchase his own freedom. Women entered into marriage through a contract arranged by her family. She came with a dowry, and the gifts given by the groom to the bride also came with her. At its top is a two-and-a-half-foot relief carving of a standing Hammurabi receiving the law—symbolized by a measuring rod and tape—from the seated Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice.

The rest of the seven-foot-five-inch monument is covered with columns of chiseled cuneiform script. The edicts are all written in if-then form. For example, if a man steals an ox, then he must pay back 30 times its value.

The edicts range from family law to professional contracts and administrative law, often outlining different standards of justice for the three classes of Babylonian society—the propertied class, freedmen and slaves. Penalties for malpractice followed the same scheme: a doctor who killed a rich patient would have his hands cut off, while only financial restitution was required if the victim was a slave.

There they uncovered the stele of Hammurabi—broken into three pieces—that had been brought to Susa as spoils of war, likely by the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte in the midth century B. The stele was packed up and shipped to the Louvre in Paris, and within a year it had been translated and widely publicized as the earliest example of a written legal code—one that predated but bore striking parallels to the laws outlined in the Hebrew Old Testament.

The U. Supreme Court building features Hammurabi on the marble carvings of historic lawgivers that lines the south wall of the courtroom. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!