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Legal Time Line: year 0 - Coggle Diagram

- - - - English Bill of Rights: 1689
        
        European Enlightenment: 1700-1800
        
        Blackstone's Commentaries: 1765-1769, England
        
        US Declaration of Independence: 1776
        
        US Constitution: 1787
        
        US Bill of Rights: 1791
        
        2 more items...
        
        "we the people...in order to form a more perfect union establish justice, ensure tranquility," etc.
        
        we are laying down the ground work to truly form a nation; the AOC didn't cut it because we were too lenient and now we've got a few years under our belt we can start making something more permanent, learn from our mistakes and leave room to fix future ones
        
        again, this is the document of America
        
        I want to save my good commentary for the Bill of Rights so let me just say this and this only, the Constitution, as Mother as she is (pardon my genz tom foolery for a moment), is not her. Did she save our nation from the disaster that was the Articles of the Confederation? Yes, is she perfect? No of course not are you insane, but she wasn't meant to be, that's the point.
        
        ah yes, the birth of our nation, well, at least the start of the birth of out nation, in this instance we are changing our status to single and dealing with a toxic ex
        
        unalienable rights, all men are created equal, the pursuit of happiness, and all of this is just from the preamble, we go on to list our grievances, but in American schools this is the go-to "stick it to the man" document because we told Britain to just go right off and leave us alone to put it bluntly
        
        This literally was the beginning of our America era, what else is there to say except that no this and the Constitution are not the same thing and no the Declaration of Independence does not start with "we the people" that's the Constitution. On surface level this influences us today because we wouldn't be "Americans" without it, and on a deeper level we took all the grievances in this document and (tried to) fix them in our Constitution/Bill of Rights.
        
        Blackstone was the legal guy of the century and the next one
        
        his commentaries on the laws of England went down in legal history and that's because we get more discussion on things like "Natural Law" similar to John Locke's natural rights of man
        
        it's these certain rights, freedoms, and rules that everyone must follow in order for a just and fair society because that's just how it is
        
        The legal head-honcho so to speak, and boy did this guy have some interesting things to say and if I may a tad bit treasonous if we want to go that far and be dramatic. Anyways this guy likes to talk about natural law and it's presence of lack thereof in English law, and the colonies really took this commentary to heart; I mean seriously, the founding fathers probably read his commentaries, so absolutely they incorporated his ideas of natural law into forming the new America.
        
        ah yes, the European Enlightenment; the first domino to fall before the Revolutionary Era
        
        truly something to encapsulate and point to as the quintessence of fighting an oppressive rule (it makes it a bit ironic then that this was mostly spear-headed by white men, but I digress)
        
        basically this was the time to talk about laissez-faire economics, democracy, the old principles of ancient Greece and Rome, humanity, individuality, secularism
        
        this was the age to continue what the Renaissance began and actually make so political change rather than mere cultural change (not to undermine cultural change though of course)
        
        I truly love this era, and I guess you could blame Mr. Absher on that, but anyways I love this because I love the Revolution Era, and it all started because post Renaissance people held onto those ideas and thought why don't we implement this into the government and I love them for that, and I love even more that when they couldn't do that, they literally just tore it all down. I also love how different all the revolutions are like Haiti was starting over completely with not the best resources, US was just making it offical and making a few changes, France was utter chaos, and it was all because of this period of time.
        
        it was birthed from the struggle between the King, Parliament, and the English people
        
        it was designed to grant more individual freedoms and protections, much like the soon to be existing American Bill of Rights
        
        the big point of this whole thing though was a power check on the King and to call out all the tyrannical and illegal things he'd been doing
        
        It's in the name alright, the "English Bill of Rights", the "Bill of Rights" I mean come on, we weren't even original. Anyways we literally did the same thing but in a different font, we listen out all our rights and individual freedoms and protections just like they did in this document.
      - everyone's heard of the magna carta, it's that document, he is him
        
        basically, per following this trend of toppling unjust ruler, an aristocracy was getting the power instead of the tyrannical king
        
        this may not sound all that grand cause it's basically trading one prison for another, this is revolutionary because it calls for the protection of individual rights for the free man (again though, this definition of "free man" is still quite the exclusive club)
        
        but the most important thing about this document is no one, not even the king, is above the law
      - YES THIS IS THE DOCUMENT. Anyways, the big deal with this old thing is that it said nobody is above the law, and we really took that to heart especially when creating our checks and balances systems, like our impeachment process for example (except the problem with that is that it doesn't have a good success record)
- - - - Hammurabi's Code: 18th century, Babylon
        
        Urukagina's code: 2350, Mesopotamia
        
        one of, if not the earliest recorded example of government reform
        
        it was meant to end an oppressive government
        
        This is the OG of government reform, something the US prides itself on, so to say that the US wasn't influenced by this first recorded instance of government reform is like saying that last domino would've fallen anyways without the push of the other (now if we're talking literal physics that would make sense but if we're talking quantum physics and time travel that'd be a whole other story).
        
        while it's not the first example of legal code in history, much less Mesopotamian, it was a legal code that was written in a public area so anyone could read it
        
        it also centered around the idea that everyone is innocent until proven guilty
        
        This code is about the public and for the public, and the US is a democracy, a people's government; it's like a match made in heaven. See, this code was about getting the public, whom the laws were for, involved in their ruling which in basic form sounds similar to elections and voting; it's a way of engaging the public in politics and their fate
      - these laws were harsh to the max, forget eye for an eye it'd be your life for my eye
        
        it was repealed and revised multiple times since it's creation by Draco
        
        it's original intention was to combat aristocrats from abusing the lack of written law which is a bit ironic considering the laws called for intense punishment
      - Listen, to say American law was inspired specifically and literally by these laws would make the US a bit worse then it is (and it already has some pretty bad parts), but the general idea of these laws (not the extreme punishment) is connected to the US because it's combating the rich from abusing the laws by hiding behind a veiled political curtain. Now does the US have it's own curtain? Of course it does, that's what the CIA is (this is meant to be a lighthearted joke, a sleeper agent better not come for me), but the difference was that before these laws, the political curtain was opaque, now it's just translucent.