Teen Court and the First Written Laws

Ridgeway Teen Court Handbook: Why We Have a Rulebook

1Welcome to Ridgeway Teen Court. Here, students who have broken a school or city rule for the first time, such as damaging property, appear before a jury of other students. Before every hearing, the student and the family receive a copy of this handbook. It lists the rules, the steps of a hearing and the range of sentences, such as 10 to 30 hours of community service. Jurors may not invent a new punishment or give more hours than the handbook allows.

2Why so many written rules? The answer goes back thousands of years. For most of history, laws were customs carried in people's memories, and whoever judged a case decided what the custom meant. Writing laws down made them harder to bend. One of the oldest known written codes comes from King Ur-Nammu of Ur, in Sumer. About 350 years later, King Hammurabi of Babylon had about 282 laws carved on stone pillars and set up in public. Many of his penalties were very harsh, and a penalty often depended on whether a person was a noble, a commoner or enslaved.

3In early Rome, judges came from the patricians, a group of wealthy old families. Plebeians, the ordinary citizens, said patrician judges twisted unwritten customs to favor themselves. In 494 BCE many plebeians walked out of the city in protest. They won officials of their own and kept pressing for written laws. About 450 BCE, Rome's laws were set up in the Forum on twelve tablets, and Romans treated them as the base of their law for centuries. Even so, one table banned marriage between patricians and plebeians, a rule Romans dropped only a few years later.

4These codes did not treat everyone equally, but they planted an idea that grew over many centuries: the rule of law. Under the rule of law, rules are written and known in advance, a fair process decides guilt before anyone is punished, and the same rules bind leaders and judges as well as ordinary people.

Hammurabi's Code (about 1754 BCE)

Law 1. If a man accuses another man of murder but cannot prove it, the accuser shall be put to death.

Law 3. If a man comes forward as a witness in a case where a life is at stake, and he cannot prove what he said, he shall be put to death.

Law 53. If a man is too lazy to keep his dike strong, and it breaks and floods the farmland, he shall replace the grain that was ruined.

Laws 215–217. If a doctor saves a noble's life with surgery, he shall receive 10 shekels of silver. If the patient is a commoner, he shall receive 5 shekels. If the patient is a slave, the slave's owner shall pay 2 shekels.

The Twelve Tables (about 450 BCE, as quoted by later writers)

Table III. A person who admits a debt, or who has been judged to owe it, shall have 30 days to pay.

Table VII. If a tree's branches hang over a neighbor's land, they shall be trimmed to a height of 15 feet.

Table IX. A judge appointed by law who is found to have taken a bribe shall be put to death.

Table IX. Putting to death any person who has not been convicted is forbidden.

Table XI. Marriage between patricians and plebeians is not allowed.