Lesson #1
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We start our study thousands of years ago. The ethics of the tribal traditions, based on custom, found expression in many cultures as customary laws. We are going to study many of the earliest.
A legal custom is the established pattern of behavior that individuals can objectively verify within a particular social setting or civilization. A person can carry out a claim to defend "what has always been done and accepted by law."
Customary law exists where:
Most customary laws deal with community standards that have been long-established in a given locale. These laws have often been passed down verbally for thousands of years in ancient civilizations.
The customary laws we will study in this lesson had a religious and a secular facet and, in the Babylonian case, provided an early example of recognizable civil government.
The primary impetus for a formal government apparatus appears to come from the development of cities, which conceptually take the form of collections of strangers (i.e., unfamiliar people).
This development is essential because it means that the people in cities not naturally bound together by the ties and obligations of the family can reach a consensus on ethical behavior.
We will evaluate the development of customary law in the Code of Hammurabi and the Torah.