Twelve Tables

One of our readings this week was about the Twelve Tables, which was written by the Romans when they wrote their laws on big bronze tables about rights and human rights.  A lot of the rights written were still kind of modern because some of them lasted over 2000 years.  Like woman do not have human rights that changed around 1850 ish.  These tables of laws were a lot different then the laws of Hammurabi's Code, that code of law was a lot more strict and said "shall be put on death" these laws written by the Romans were not a strict they were like a middle ground it was more of a balance.  Like one of the laws were about if owing people money if did not pay had to go to court if then still cant pay go to jail and then increasing got worse unlike Hammurabi’s Code it was if cant pay then that person just gets put on death without a second chance.   I also noticed that the tone of the Twelve Tables were softer and would not really scare people.  There were some laws I did not care for in the Twelve Tables like the woman have no rights and that the father has to right by the law to own his children and can do whatever he wants to do to them.  Like beating them, making them work and also killing them it is legal for the father to do that.  And I just do not think that is right.  This reminds me of abuse but now its illegal. 

Why do the Twelve Tables signify a concept of "rights?" What makes this an important historical moment?

This was a major jump-start to the history of laws; people knew what their punishment would be.  Also the tables showed the citizens the life of property and what their property was including woman.  Unlike Hammurabi's code its more a nicer tone.  This is an important historical document because it had included human rights towards the people.  Unlike Hammurabi's code it was filled with punishments towards the people.