2.1 The Origin of Law and Jurisprudence

Legal rules have been around for thousands of years, starting with basic ideas about right and wrong and growing into detailed systems of rules used worldwide today. To understand why some laws exist and how new ones are created, we need to look at where law began and how it has changed over time.

The Inception of the Law

The idea of what the law is began in early human societies, where people followed unwritten rules to guide their behavior. These groups did not have formal laws like we do now, but they used tribal leaders, shared customs, and group decisions to settle arguments. Early laws were often linked to religious beliefs and cultural traditions which then became the standard for how a society should behave. For example, many historians believe that it was a custom for hunters within a tribe to share their kill amongst the tribe members on their return. Failure to comply with this social norm could lead to the hunter being excluded or punished by the tribe, effectively operating like an unwritten law.

As civilisations grew, laws became more organised and started being written down instead of being passed from generation to generation. Around 2100–2050 BCE, the Code of Ur-Nammu in Mesopotamia was one of the first written sets of laws to be produced, followed by the famous Code of Hammurabi in 1754 BCE. These codes were early efforts to write down rules, showing what people could do and what punishments they would face.

Similarly, the Roman Law system, especially after the writing of the Corpus Juris Civilis under Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century CE, became the foundation of much of modern civil law. Roman law's emphasis on property rights, contracts, and torts shaped and has continued to influence European legal traditions for centuries.