Originally published on February 3, 2022 (Episode 246)
Introduction
For thousands of years, laws have not only been imposed by the powerful upon the powerless—they have also been embraced by the powerless as instruments of justice and order. In the very act of codification, laws became tools for defining communities, regulating trade, and sustaining civilization.
What unites humanity across cultures, argues Fernanda Pirie, is a remarkably consistent belief that law can produce justice, combat oppression, and create order from chaos. Unsurprisingly therefore, law has always been tied to the holy and the numinous. Consider the Hammurabi stele: King Hammurabi receives his code not from men, but from Shamash, the god of the sun.
In The Rule of Laws: A 4,000-Year Quest to Order the World (Profile Books, 2021; Oxford University Press, 2022 in the U.S.), Pirie explores how legal systems evolved from Mesopotamia to the present, and how they continue to shape our hopes for justice today.
About the Guest
Fernanda Pirie is Professor of the Anthropology of Law at the University of Oxford. A specialist in Tibetan anthropology and comparative law, she is also the author of The Anthropology of Law (Oxford University Press, 2014).
For Further Investigation
Fernanda Pirie, The Rule of Laws: A 4,000-Year Quest to Order the World (Oxford University Press, 2022)
Fernanda Pirie, The Anthropology of Law (Oxford University Press, 2014)
Fernanda Pirie, “What Ancient Laws Can Teach Us About Holding Autocrats to Account Today” (Time, Dec. 23, 2021)
Episode 208: What’s Love Got to Do With It? — on the intermingling of law and love in early modern Scotland
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If laws have always promised justice, why do they so often fail? Can we still think of law as a universal human aspiration rather than just an instrument of power? Share your reflections in the comments—and send this episode to a friend who loves legal history.
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