Class Discussion

Based on the class discussion held where the question was "Why did the people write these laws?" I believe they wrote these laws because of how they needed to set order to the crimes that may be committed. Additionally, I think that these laws were established in order to prevent the crimes from happening. What I mean by this is that as people commit crimes and then are sentenced to death, it will influence people to not do it anymore since they don't want to be killed. As much as we may think of the crimes as being harsh, since currently states have banned the death penalty, I thought that at the time it wouldn't be considered harsh since it was a way of bringing respect and justice to the community. Additionally I feel that now, human rights are more developed than they were back then, so if we're violating someone's right to live by death, which an example would be Steve Biko's case when the he faced injustice from the South African government and died, we're taking away an individuals human rights. But if that were to happen in the time of Hammurabi, I assume that no rights would've been violated since if someone commits a crime, the person's punishment is death, and if for example Steve Biko would do that, the government doesn't want anyone to go against them, so they would punish him in any way. Even though these two events may differ because of how people would react, I would find them alike in doing the same thing to whoever would oppose them, which is violate their rights. Even in countries like US, I still feel they do the same to people that believe and stand for what they think is right. For example, if someone were to wear a Che Guevara shirt out in the streets, the government wouldn't want the person to pass out ideas to the community of actually supporting him, since the US consider him a murderer. But there are two view points. The point of view coming from the Guevara follower is that he is a hero for all of Latin America for trying to bringing equality and end the injustice faced from the government from all those countries that don't care for the benefit of the people. But either way that person would be hurt for showing it. The government will just they want to prevent anything form happening, when in reality they are the people provoking it.