Richard W. Nice

This "Treasury" provides primo translations of ORIGINAL legal texts from across time and place on this belayed planet. Begins with the stinging observation of the dictionarianist Dagobert Runes, that from antiquity to the present, "one shudders not at what people did unlawfully, but rather at what crimes were committed in the name of the law".
Puts the Kufic Al-Bukhari Koran ("Guide") of Islam adjacent to the Pentateuchal Torah ("Guide") revealed to Moses. Notes the disagreement over which of the "Ten Commandments" should be considered, where Mosaic law has hundreds of laws and even the "Ten" are written in somewhat different language in both Exodus XX (listing some 30 orders in 17 verses) and Deuteronomy V.
No people, but especially none of the "leaders" of any people, has obeyed any of these laws. Laws appear to have an importance and a function for reasons other than obedience.

Curiously, the editor starts with texts which describe Law of the Chinese court as experienced by Portugese merchants, accused of piracy in the "heartland", China. He then turns to Babylon, presenting Hammurabi's diorite promulgation, which is earlier: 2100 bc.… (plus d'informations)