Law: Did you mean...?

The Code of Ur-Nammu (c. 2100-2050 BCE) is the oldest extant law code in the world. It was written by the Sumerian king Ur-Nammu (r. 2047-2030 BCE) or his son Shulgi of Ur (r. 2029-1982 BCE) centuries before the famous Code of Hammurabi was...

The Twelve Tables (aka Law of the Twelve Tables) was a set of laws inscribed on 12 bronze tablets created in ancient Rome in 451 and 450 BCE. They were the beginning of a new approach to laws which were now passed by government and written...

Paul was a follower of Jesus Christ who famously converted to Christianity on the road to Damascus after persecuting the very followers of the community that he joined. However, as we will see, Paul is better described as one of the founders...

The Justinian Code or Corpus Juris Civilis (Corpus of Civil Law) was a major reform of Byzantine law created by Emperor Justinian I (r. 527-565 CE) in 528-9 CE. Aiming to clarify and update the old Roman laws, eradicate inconsistencies and...

The Code of Hammurabi was a set of 282 laws inscribed in stone by the Babylonian king Hammurabi (r. 1795-1750 BCE) who conquered and then ruled ancient Mesopotamia. Although his law code was not the first, it was the most clearly defined...

Martin Luther's 95 Theses, credited with sparking the Protestant Reformation in Europe, have become a cultural touchstone since he posted them 31 October 1517, but the little-known 97 Theses, posted only a month earlier, are equally significant...

Marbury v. Madison (1803) was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that established the principle of judicial review. In the decision, written by Chief Justice John Marshall, the court struck down a congressional statute...

Paul was a member of the Jewish Pharisees in the 1st century CE, who experienced a revelation of the resurrected Jesus Christ. In this vision, Jesus commissioned him to be the apostle (herald) to the Gentiles (non-Jews). After this experience...

Early medieval Icelandic government, or Viking Iceland, has been termed an incipient form of democracy or democratic parliamentarism, however, the system was actually nothing like its European counterparts, be they medieval or contemporary...

The medieval sources on the discovery and settlement of Iceland frequently refer to the explorers as “Vikings” but, technically, they were not. The term “Viking” applies only to Scandinavian raiders, not to Scandinavians generally. Some of...