Atlas Trail
From Ancient Codes to Modern Legal Theory
Law began as a written code enforced by a ruler's own authority, and only slowly became a subject of independent scholarship. This trail follows ten jurists across roughly four thousand years, from Hammurabi's Babylonian code through Roman and Byzantine codification, into the natural law and common law traditions that shaped the modern civil and common law families, and on to the twentieth century's attempt to describe law as a self-contained system of thought.
Stop 1 of 10.
Jurists
Hammurabi's law code was presented as a revelation from the Babylonian god of justice Shamash, and it broke from earlier Sumerian codes such as the Code of Ur-Nammu by establishing a presumption of innocence for the accused.
Stop 2 of 10.
Jurists
Draco issued Athens's first written law code around 621 to 620 BCE, replacing the arbitrary oral rulings of aristocratic judges, and his code was remembered chiefly for its severity, giving the English language the word draconian.
Stop 3 of 10.
Jurists
Ulpian was named one of the five jurists whose opinions carried binding authority under the Law of Citations of Valentinian III, and his own writings supplied about a third of the contents of the later Justinian Digest.
Stop 4 of 10.
Jurists
Justinian I's most enduring legacy is the Corpus Juris Civilis, a uniform rewriting of Roman law that still underlies civil law in many modern states.
Stop 5 of 10.
Jurists
Francisco de Vitoria founded the School of Salamanca and has been described by scholars as the father of international law, alongside Alberico Gentili and Hugo Grotius, for his concept of just war.
Stop 6 of 10.
Jurists
As Lord Chief Justice, Edward Coke told James I in Prohibitions del Roy in 1607 that the king could not personally decide legal cases, and in Dr. Bonham's Case in 1610 suggested a court could hold an Act of Parliament void, a dictum later read as an early seed of judicial review.
Stop 7 of 10.
Jurists
Hugo Grotius's 1625 De Jure Belli ac Pacis grounded relations among states in a natural law binding sovereigns even without a common earthly authority, systematizing what became the modern law of nations.
Stop 8 of 10.
Jurists
William Blackstone's four-volume Commentaries on the Laws of England, published 1765 to 1769, was the first attempt to present the whole of English common law as a coherent, teachable system, and was read closely by the American Founders.
Stop 9 of 10.
Jurists
Jean-Etienne-Marie Portalis was one of the chief draftsmen of the Napoleonic Code, which became the foundational framework of the French legal system.
Stop 10 of 10.
Jurists
Hans Kelsen named his own theory of law the pure theory of law and, as an expert in constitutional law, was the principal architect of the 1920 Austrian Constitution, which, with amendments, remains in force.
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