In the oldest Code of Laws in the known world, the code of Hammurabi, King of Babylon, 2285 B. C.,[6] who claimed to have received his laws from the seated sun-god, Samas, the “judge of heaven and earth;”—an old, Mosaic bearded king, as represented to us, from the dark ages, upon the black block of diorite, presenting also his Code of Laws; known to history as the Babylonian king, who conquered the four quarters of the earth; who enriched Ur (Father Abraham’s birthplace), the humble, the reverent, who clothed the gravestones of Malkat with green; the warrior who guarded Larsa and renewed Ebabbar; the Shield of the land who united the scattered inhabitants of Isin; who firmly founded the farm of Kish; the White Potent one who penetrated the secret cave of the bandits; one who recognizes the Right and who Rules by Law; who humbles himself before the great gods[7]—this valiant one of the misty ages of long ago, in his Code, after providing for the death of the man who should weave a spell or put a ban upon another man, in the fifth section of his Code of Laws, provided for the recall or removal of the judges of his courts, by the following provision: “If a judge has judged a judgment, decided a decision, granted a sealed sentence, and afterwards has altered his judgment, that judge, for the alteration of the judgment that he judged, one shall put him to account and he shall pay twelve-fold the penalty, which was in the said judgment, and in the assembly one shall expel him from his judgment seat, and he shall not return, and with the judges at a judgment he shall not take his seat.”[8] Petitions and motions for a rehearing were thus interdicted by Hammurabi, regardless of the mistakes entering into the judgment, which could only be righted by a rehearing, or a new trial, and if a new trial were granted, the judge was publicly disgraced and recalled and was never allowed to sit in judgment again. So unalterably opposed were the ancient Babylonians to the granting of a new trial, that if a decision for the infliction of a penalty were set aside, the judge had to pay it twelve-fold to him from whom it was exacted and for any new trial granted by him, the judge was publicly deposed from his office and expelled from his seat of judgment and no longer permitted to sit with the judges. According to the strict letter of the Code, it was no justification for the judge to be able to show that the new trial was granted to prevent a miscarriage of justice, for as the law reads, a judgment once pronounced was irrevocable, for that judge, at least.[9] But let us look more minutely into the procedure, governing the right of litigants in the days of Hammurabi. It was the prerogative of the King, during the First Dynasty, to send to the local judges his own decision of a cause, or to simply send the case to them for trial.