The Rule of Laws: A 4,000-Year Quest to Order the World

by Fernanda Pirie

Law developed quite independently in Mesopotamia, India, and China, at least as far as the historical record suggests. In each case, the lawmakers created basic rules that specified punishments and compensation, regulated family relations and contracts, and provided rules for evidence. Their substance reflected the social problems that mediators faced everywhere in complex societies. Their laws could, at least in principle, have been applied by judges, and they soon were by China’s magistrates, but all the early lawmakers had higher aspirations. The Mesopotamian laws were casuistic, specifying the consequences of actions, events, and situations; the brahmins spelled out duties; and the Chinese defined appropriate punishments—and behind each legal system was a different vision of order. Their texts were more important for what they represented—statements about justice, a map for a social hierarchy, a system of discipline—than for the social order they actually produced.