Code Comparison of Contract Law

Comparisons of Contract Law between the
Code of Hummurabi and Magna Carta


According to the article 9 of Hummurabi code stated about losing an article. This law states so clearly about the process how to prove to the court if the property belongs to them or not. If we look at the law processing, it seems so strict and perfect. They will not just judge people base on a principle thing. The court will try to find out the root of story and start to consider about the story and they will punish the thief. If he/she is a thief and they can prove it, he/she will be put to death. They set the strict rule like this in order to control their country in a proper way. They just don’t want people to think about stealing, robbing or other staff that are not moral, that the society hate. To human rights law this law seem so harsh to their people. Just to prove that he’s a thief then put them to death. They didn’t treat their own people in a polite way. Yes, he steals things but it doesn’t mean that he will always be a thief forever. They should give him another chance. They can punish him and then let see if he changes or he’s still the same. But even he doesn’t change, stealing shouldn’t be put in death. Because it’s not a very harsh criminal act that no body can forgive him.

For Magna Carta law in art. 28 and 32 stated about the royal officer who want to take one’s property without permission. If he does that, he must return the property back to the owner within a year and a day. But this didn’t say anything about the punishment, even though there will a punishment for them. Via this law we can see that, people who enacted this law wants people are the same. They treat everyone in the same way. This is mean that even he’s a royal officer, he work in the royal palace, but this doesn’t mean that he’s powerful, so he can take anybody property whenever they can. And he has a reasonable period that he has to return the property to it owner. If we compare this to human rights, this law is enacted along the human rights. Because it seems they have their own rule to control people but not very cruel. They didn’t separate class to people and treat them with a different way.

In my opinion, Magna Carta law is getting along with human right and Magna Carta found a better way to treat their people by punish they according to the level of he/she criminal act. But Hummurabi is very harsh, they treating their people too strict and they didn’t care about their people life. They will put anyone to death if he/she did something wrong but they didn’t bother to give he/she another chance.

Any way, I think that no one wanted to be bad unless they were poor so they should steal. And the thief will be in a good way if they were punished a year and a day such a case in art.28 and 32 of Magna Carta Law.