ORIGIN. 1975. Further details may exist on the, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ancient_Greek_law&oldid=999544371, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2017, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference, Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Blanshard, Alastair J. L. 2014. SSRN Electronic Journal, CrossRef; Google Scholar; Cox, Rory 2017. of rule of law in ancient Greece and lack of such a process in Persia. Here they would decide the city’s laws and who should sit on its ruling council. Athenian Courts heard two types of cases—private [dikai] or public [graphai]. The Mesopotamian kingdom of Babylon is best known for its Code of Hammurabi, the first list of crimes and punishments ever created. [10], The Athenian law codes set forth by Draco were completely reformed by Solon, who was the archon of Athens c.593 BC. [1], Historians consider the Ancient Athenian law broadly procedural and concerned with the administration of justice rather than substantive. [10] Though the rest of the code is unknown, it was by Athenian tradition known to have been very harsh. Buy the print book Check if you have access via personal or institutional login . Plato and Aristotle on Tyranny and the Rule of Law Nearly 2,400 years ago, the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle explored political philosophy. The ancient Persian empires are denoted as despotic, practicing arbitrary rule while Greece, Persia's archrival during the sixth to fourth century BC, exercised rule of law. Some Greek law scholars criticized the idea that revenge was a private pre-civic reaction of the victim (or of his relatives) to an offensive behavior, while punishment was the civic reaction to the violation of a law rule. Public prosecutions, or graphai, were heard by juries of 501 or more, increasing in increments of 500 jurors, while private suits, or dikai, were heard by 201 or 401 jurors, depending on the amount of money at stake. Slow advancement in the society developed the importance of rules and regulations. The concept of Rule of law is of old origin and is an ancient ideal. Whereas law as a means of governance of human communities dates back to at least 3000 bce in ancient Egypt, sustained and systematic philosophical reflection on its nature for which there is surviving evidence began only in the late 5th century bce in ancient Greece and nearby areas of the Mediterranean, not long after the birth of Western philosophy itself. The government systems of ancient Greece were varied as the Greeks searched for the answers to such fundamental questions as who should rule and how? Rome didn't like there leader so they had a 16 year battle declaring that there civilisation should be led by a true leaders. The previous section has shown that the Greeks shared from the Archaic period onwards a constitutional identity based on the ideal of the rule of law as opposed to the rule of man (characterized as tyranny). Men in Athens could vote on all of the things that affected the city and could be a jury member. [17], In Ancient Athens, there were two types of lawsuit. The laws created by Draco were quite harsh, due to this Solon changed all the laws of Draco except for ‘the law that establishes exile as the penalty for homicide’. Solon, an Athenian statesman, and lawmaker refined Draco’s laws and is credited with “democratizing” justice by making the courts more accessible to citizens. Some of these city-states were being managed by rich influential groups of people. 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