About the Hammurabi's Code and How it can be Applied in US Law (Essay Sample)

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Hammurabi’s Code
Reading through Hammurabi’s Code, one will realize that laws should always be about sustaining and upholding justice rather than executing and propagating acts of revenge. From a personal stance, the Code, inscribed by one of the most eminent ancient Mesopotamian kings, evokes a compelling sense of the concept of justice rather than equal retaliation. On one hand, there exists the element of natural strictness in the Hammurabi’s Law Code. But on the other, the laws were disciplinary measures designed fundamentally to align the common man with the precepts of justices. For instance, the first three directives in Hammurabi’s Code as outlined by Horne, Johns, and King are simply provisions for protecting defendants from any form of injustices. Additionally, laws 196 to 200 in the Code provided the “an eye for an eye” and “a tooth for a tooth” method of executing discipline as Horne, Johns, and King affirm.
While the disciplinary criterion may appear vengeful in the context of chastisement, it is a primitive approach to showing sympathy to transgressors characterized by justice at its nucleus. And as the USHistory.org asserts, the “an eye for an eye” phrase constitute what a majority of people perceive as a punitive sense of revenge-oriented justice (par. 6). Nonetheless, the phrase is just an extract from an entirely complex Code that enhances justice in terms of settling disputes, advocating fair compensation, and limiting crime, domestic violence, and whoredom stringently. Other laws in the Code also distinguish punishments and disciplinary measures executable on lower-class people, nobles, and slaves. In all these decrees, there is nowhere that the revenge factor features as all of them are about safeguarding integrity within society. Based on these arguments, I am persuaded that laws and their enforcement should focus on justice rather than revenge. For me, pursuing criminals to punish their wrongdoing is not an act of equal retaliation, but a way of restoring equilibrium evenhandedly. I do not disregard the fact that vengeance can masquerade as justice, but making revenge the core of legal systems instead of justice would only enhance self-distraction in society.
The contemporary United States laws should incorporate some of the decrees in Hammurabi’s Code, one of which is the fifth precept in the Code. The statute provided the guidelines for dismissing judges and the penalties executable on them if they made erroneous rulings or demonstrated other signs of incompetency. In that sense, I think the United States can make its judicial branch more effective by getting stricter on juries’ competence in handling cases as emphasized in this Hammurabi’s law. I also think laws 228 to 235 in the Code should be part of the United States laws because they clearly delineated the accountability attendant to builders. In essence, the laws would be an indispensable foundation for the United States laws that govern contracts. Thirdly, I advocate the partial inclusion of the second and third edicts of the Hammurabi’s Code into the U.S laws as they direct handling of accusation and innocence. Looking at the overwhelming street integrations and police stops in New York characterize by huge numbers of innocent persons as documented by the NYCLU, one will agree with me that including these Hammurabi’s laws in those of the United States is vital. On the other hand, the laws and parts of laws in Hammurabi’s Code that advocate death sentences should not be part of the United States law. They would prompt the public to take the law into their hands over rather ...