Codes Comparision

Prof: Stan Starygin
Students' name: Men Ka & Nay Sitha
Topic: Comparison of Contract law of the Code of Hummarabi and Magna Carta


Dear All,

As we all have seen that the codes of Hummarabi and Magna Carta consists a lot of articles concerning about the contract law, family law, criminal law, heritage law, and trade law. We would like to draw your attention on the topic of the contract law of the two and study together whether the Hummarabi Code or Magna Carta is more precisely and have something on human right which we think it is more sense and better than one another.

Well, some of the articles of contract law in both Hummarabi Code and Magna Carta had clearly stated about the responsibility of individual who agrees to sign the contract and decides to take the way they want to. For example, the article 120, 121 in the Hummarabi Code to which the owner of the house who agree to allow some one deposits the property must take responsible for the loss of the property that is lost in his or her house because he or she is agreed to the owner of the property.

However there are some of articles of the Humarabi Code that are mentioned about the contract law did not decribe, and promote human right, for instance, the article 45 of the code. The code mentioned that " if a man rent his field for tillage for fixed rent, and receives the rent of his fixed, but bad weather come to destroy the harvest, the injury falls up on the tiller of the soil." This whole article, does not have anything to do with human right because the tiller who rent the field do not have right to claim lost sharing because it is not his own fall, but the bad weather and who is going to control the weather. The code, at least, mentioned that the tiller should have right to bargain with the land owner but it put pressure to the tiller causing those who want to rent the field felt afraid to rent if such a case happen.

In contrast, articles of the contract law of Magna Carta were clearly mentioned and concerned on human right. They, at least, mentioned in one or two clauses in the article of the contract law.
For example, article 9 that its first clause states about the right to property even though he ows some one and he was unable to pay on time, he still has right to protect his land, unmovable goods, while he still has chance to earn living and even pays the debt. To this clause, the author was very clear because he understood that if he mentioned about right of the debtor to seize the land, there would be chaotic in the society and it cuased trouble to the government.

Moreover, the article 10 of Magna Carta in the second clause mentioned about the child right to property becasue he had right not to pay debt while he or she was under age. It is the beauty of the article that is more sensible and respect the human right and it would not give burden to the child who knew nothing about the debt that his or her father had borrowed.

On the other hand, the article 11 of the code clearly eradicates the idea of discrimination between race and ethnicity group. It is the beauty of the article becasue they treated equally regardless they are Jews or Christianity. It is the party of the human right becasue every human has equal right regardless who you are and what you are. If you are human beings, you are treated fairly under the human universal right.

In conclusion, we think that the Code of Magna Carta in term of contract law seem to be better than the Hummarabi code because every article of the code had stated at least one or two clauses in the article concerning about the human right, especially, women and children right. Furthermore, most of the code seems to show about the democratic idea while some of them provide right to majority such as the article 12 that tax was going to pay the amount that the majority of the people consent to it but not the king alone who decided how much amount it should be.