Seeking the Footprints of Law from Ancient Egypt to the United States

Author: Yu Dingyu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: What is law? This has been the question the author has been pursuing throughout the book. Following the traces of law, he embarked on a great spiritual journey: by examining the concept of prior appropriation of bananas discovered by the Nilotic Pygmies, he confirmed the primitive footprints of human law—the footprints of "rights"; through Athena's judgment based on human nature in ancient Greek mythology, he revealed the natural theological sentiment and religious sensibilities of the ancient Greeks; through the blindfolded, sword-wielding, and scales-bearing goddess of justice, he proclaimed the ancient Romans' aspirations for law to be "mature and steady" and "fair and just"; through Beccaria's discussions on "legal certainty," "proportionality between crime and punishment," and "humane punishment," he reflected the humanitarian brilliance and philosophical passion of this genius; through the Magna Carta, which forced King John to bow his noble head, and the submission of William the Conqueror to judicial rulings and compensation for the people according to law, as well as the modern case of the Hawaiian palm suing the government, he proclaimed the supremacy of civil freedom and rights; through the globally sensational Nuremberg trial of Nazi war criminals, he validated the notion that "unjust laws are not laws," that positive law is subordinate to natural law, and the concept of social justice it conveys; through the Los Angeles police beating of a Black man and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream," he proclaimed "justice and brotherhood without discrimination by race"; through the U.S. "Miranda rule" and the globally shocking Simpson case, he proclaimed that citizens have the right not to incriminate themselves, the principle of "innocent until proven guilty," and the value conflicts and choices between individual justice and social order, etc. The engaging legal stories, accompanied by numerous oil paintings and photographs of historical sites and original documents filled with traditional charm and a great call to action, paint a grand historical panorama: it is precisely these figures of different identities and extraordinary events that have nurtured the fundamental principles and rules of the contemporary Western legal system. Among them, the author's research on their historical connections is extremely meticulous and thorough.