Ancient Foundations
This Babylonian king ordered that 282 laws be carved onto giant stone pillars to make rules predictable.
Who is Hammurabi?
This is the exact year King John was cornered at a meadow and forced to sign the Great Charter.
What is 1215?
English common law relies heavily on these--past court rulings used as guidelines to settle new, similar cases.
What are precedents?
This English philosopher argued that all people possess the natural rights to life, liberty, and property.
Who is John Locke?
This Latin term describes the ancient principle of identical retribution, commonly called an eye for an eye.
What is lex talionis?
This fundamental bedrock principle states that no individual, not even a king or a president, is above the law.
What is the Rule of Law?
This Latin phrase translates to stand by things decided, meaning judges must respect past rulings.
What is stare decisis?
Baron de Montesquieu argued for this specific three-branch structure to prevent any single ruler from gaining total control.
What is the separation of powers?
These bronze tablets were placed in the Roman marketplace to protect common plebeians from corrupt judges.
What are the Twelve Tables?
Clause 39 of the Magna Carta protected citizens from having their lives or property seized without this fair legal process.
What is due process (or the law of the land)?
To unify English law, medieval kings sent royal judges to travel on horseback along specific routes called these.
Voltaire spent his life defending these freedoms, which directly inspired America's First Amendment.
What are civil liberties? (or What is freedom of speech/religion?)
Before written legal codes were invented, human societies were ruled by this unwritten, unpredictable system.
What is arbitrary rule?
Clause 12 stated the King could not levy these without the "general consent" of the kingdom.
What are taxes?
Unlike Statutory Law which is passed ahead of time by legislatures, Common Law is built entirely by this branch of government.
What is the Judicial branch (or judges)?
This Italian reformer revolutionized criminal justice by arguing that punishments must fit the crime and torture must be banned.
Who is Cesare Beccaria?
Under Law 198 and Law 199 of Hammurabi's Code, an offender who injured a freedman or a slave paid money instead of losing an eye, proving ancient codes lacked this modern concept.
What is legal equality? (or What is equality under the law?)
Clause 40 promised that justice would not be sold, denied, or delayed, which directly inspired this modern U.S. Sixth Amendment right.
What is the right to a speedy and public trial?
This two-word Latin phrase describes the traditional Common Law rule where buyers are completely responsible for inspecting goods at their own risk.
What is caveat emptor ("buyer beware")?
Beccaria argued that the primary purpose of state punishment should not be vengeance, but rather this specific goal to prevent future crimes.
What is deterrence (or crime deterrence)?