عنوان

Adjudicating entities and levels of legal authority in lawsuit records of the Old Babylonian era

Number

TLpq304390930

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

Adjudicating entities and levels of legal authority in lawsuit records of the Old Babylonian era

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

J. D. Fortner

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

S. Greengus

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion (Ohio)

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

1997

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

1021

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion (Ohio)

Text preceding or following the note

1997

Text of Note

This study proposes a document typology of lawsuit records for legal texts of the Old Babylonian era. Using this 'core' of texts and additional selected documents, the role of the DI.KU5.MES/dayyanu (judges) is examined vis a vis the proliferation of additional adjudicating entities who also officiate in conflict resolution procedures. In addition, we explore the level(s) of legal authority each adjudicating entity represents. Chapter 1 proposes a methodology of typology by which lawsuit records may be discriminated from ancillary legal texts called associated documents which share a litigious backdrop but are not litigations typologically. Chapter 2 delineates temporal/logical perspectives for the technical legal formulae dinam suhuzum, dinam danum, and aw atam amarum. Further, we demonstrate that awatam amarum virtually supplants the other formulae in function in the post-Hammurabi era. In Chapter 3, a methodology for identifying individuals as dayyanum (judge) is proposed on the basis of which a register of judicial prosopography is set forth. Chapter 4 contains an analysis of non-dayyanum (non-judge) persons and institutions who represent either a non-state/local or a state/royal level of legal authority. These persons and institutions are defined as functional adjudicating entities. Chapters 5-7 scrutinize the reigning paradigm of Old Babylonian legal organization, centralization, and secularization in the light of textual evidence for 'royal jurisdiction' and levels of legal authority. We propose an alternate paradigm to explain royal involvement in litigations and to account for the attestation of DI.KU5/dayyanu (judges) alongside the proliferation of functional adjudicating entities. Our alternative resists previous proposals in which all DI.KU5.MES/dayyanu (judges) within the Old Babylonian legal system are subsumed to crown authority. With the exception of the 'judges of the king' and perhaps the 'judges of Babylon', we conclude that the DI.KU5.MES/dayyanu (judges) were a locally derived legal competency. Textual data attest a clearly perceivable 'office' of judge; however, this data militates against a view of the DI.KU5.MES/dayyanu (judges) as professionals. Appendix A contains a working edition in transcription, translation, and annotation of all known lawsuit records as well as selected associated documents.

Ancient civilizations

Ancient languages

Ancient languages

Language, literature and linguistics

Law

Social sciences

J. D. Fortner

S. Greengus

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y