Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Equality Under the Law: Credit Where it is Due
This is not a long, boring legal post. It is instead, a very simple assertion that I think is broadly ignored by those interested in the history of jurisprudence and the foundations of a good (which is to say “classically liberal”) society. And here it is:
The idea of equality under the law comes solely from the Torah, and its repeated commandments that there is one law for both the Jewish people and any strangers. There is no exclusion of the “other”, and no separate rules for nobility, citizens, slaves or barbarians.
In this, the Torah is contradistinct from every other known legal code in the ancient world, including Hammurabi, as well as Greek and Roman legal systems.
Published in General
E.g., Leviticus 24:22. This is in context of criminal law.
The notion of full equality percolated rather slowly in the western world. In our own American legal traditions, arising as they do from the mystical umbilical link to the forests of Wessex, it is probable that the inherent jealousy of Saxon chieftains had as much to do with establishing suffrage, equality before the law and rejection of absolute sovereign power as did our Judeo-Christian heritage.
I cannot disprove your assertion, except to suggest that the Torah’s opinion on the matter (and the underlying statement that each person has value because each person is endowed a soul by G-d) is at least well documented and discussed by theologians across these time periods. The Torah is the best selling and most-read text in the history of our civilization.
I wrote my senior thesis decades on on the origins of capitalism found in the competitive legal environment of 12th century England. This is, of course, related to (and broadly agrees with) your assertion: capitalism uniquely emerged from that environment.
It was a fun argument to make. But my thesis suffered from precisely the same limitation as your statement: though there was a nice big basket of correlation, no causation could be proven.