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CHAPTER ONE: JUSTICE

Retributive Justice When most people think of justice, they are envisioning retributive justice . Retributive justice is based on the principle that those who commit wrongdoing must be punished for their misdeeds. It is the most common approach used by legal systems, and it has a long history. One of the earliest recorded legal codes, the Code of Hammurabi, from approximately 1754 BCE, describes a variety of punishments for various crimes, including the famous requirement that “if a man destroy the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye”; this is frequently shortened to the concept of “an eye for an eye.”  For retributive justice to be effective, punishments must be proportionate to crimes, hence the common phrase “the punishment must fit the crime.” If penalties are

THE CODE OF HAMMURABI

King Hammurabi ruled the Babylonian Empire from approximately 1792 to 1750 BCE. During his reign a series of laws were codified into what became known as the Code of Hammurabi. The Code included 282 laws that defined what punishments would be awarded for specific crimes. For instance, the code states, “If any one commits a robbery and is caught, then he shall be put to death.” The code also includes stipulations on how much could be charged by professionals such as physicians. In his introduction to the laws, Hammurabi declared that he developed the Code “to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak.” The Code was discovered by archaeologists in 1901 in Iran.

The Code of Hammurabi, on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

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