The History of Law

The Code of Hammurabi

1730 BCE

• During this time, Hammurabi was King of Babylon
• In this time, many people had their own beliefs and followed the "law" they created on their own but due to the amount of disagreements this caused, Hammurabi decided to create laws that overwrite peoples individual laws.
• Hammurabi implemented "innocent until proven guilty." into the law, which is still currently used in Canadian law
• Hammurabi laws can still be seen when dealing with cases that involve theft, murder and adultery

Mosaic Law

1400 BCE

• Moses created laws for the people in Hebrew
• Moses created laws that God made for people to follow, these laws are called the Ten Commandments which were later carved into stone.
• In the Ten Commandments, we used some of his rules in our laws, an example being to not kill or steal.
• Moses has impacted Canadian law by giving us the idea of repaying the victim, which is seen when a victim gets justice in their case.

Greek Law

900 BCE

• Ancient Greece created democracy, which is still something Governments use around the world. Many Governments use their power over people
• Established the idea of every citizen needing to obey the law.
• Created the law of only having men be able to bring cases to court, this was kept for a long time however that was removed.
• Canadian law is still partially democratic at times, which is how we still use Greek law.

Roman Law

753 BCE

• Canadian law doesn't directly follow Roman law, however due to Canada following the UK’s Common Law system, which was influenced by the Roman law, we still follow some parts of Roman law.
• Roman law created the idea of Tort Law, Codification, and Lawyers, which are things Canada uses.
• The Canadian Government offers people lawyers when they go to trial.

The Feudal System

401

• The feudal system is a system in which there are different levels of authority, with the King at the top and freemen at the bottom.
• Canada follows the Kings decisions because we are a monarchy system of government
• The feudal system is also when the justice system would put their trust into God and let Him decide on whether a person is guilty or not. The idea behind this was that God would save whoever is innocent and punish anyone who is guilty.

Justinian’s Code

500

• Justinian the 1st took all the laws that have ever been created and sorted them and labelled each one. The common theme was equality towards people, excluding women and slaves however.
• Justinian the 1st helped Canada make laws more organized and helped put them all together.
• Created the theme of equality in law

Common Law

1066

• Common law was created when judges had to travel to different villages to hold a trial, needing to resolve an issue. As the trials went on, the judges began to write and keep track of the cases, eventually they started using the same punishments and the same way to resolve issues. This became common law, using unofficial laws to come to the same conclusion for different yet similar cases.

Napoleonic Code

1800

• Napoleon Bonaparte was the leader of the French army and had lots of influence on laws that were created during this time due to his position.
• Napoleon created the Napoleonic code which was a more modernized version of the Justinian code
• He created the law of freedom to religion which is something Canada follows, allowing people to be able to follow whatever religion they choose- if they would like to follow one.
• Quebec Civil code is heavily based of Napoleons code