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date: 26 May 2020

Abstract and Keywords

This article examines judicial decision-making in ancient Mesopotamia. It explains that the Mesopotamian perception of justice combined the notions of stability and straightness and it was intended to reproduce cosmic order in the terrestrial world. It describes various people who served as judges and arbitrators. It discusses the individual stages and elements of a trial at court and argues that despite its apparent adversarial nature, Mesopotamian judicial practice was in essence conciliatory.

Keywords: judicial decision-making, ancient Mesopotamia, justice, judges, arbitrators, trial, judicial practices

Sophie Démare‐Lafont

Sophie Démare-Lafont is Professor of the History of Law at Université Panthéon-Assas and at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. Her main research interests belong to legal documentation from Mesopotamia and the comparison between this and biblical sources. The editor of a volume exploring the political and legal implications of oath-taking (Jurer et maudire: pratiques politiques et usages juridiques du serment dans le Proche-Orient ancien, 1996) and author of a study on women and criminal law (Femmes, droit et justice dans l'antiquité orientale: contribution à l'étude du droit pénal au Proche-Orient ancien, 1999, based on her 1990 dissertation at the Faculté de Droit de l'Université de Paris-II), she recently edited a book, with A. Lemaire, tracing legal formulae in documents recorded in various Semitic languages (Trois millénaires de formulaires juridiques, 2010).

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