Laying the Groundwork
During the year of 623 B.C., a man by the name of Draco created the first official Athenian law code. This code was simple and brutal, yet effective; the punishment for everything was death. Draco himself stated that death was the appropriate punishment for just stealing a cabbage. He also stated that he would have made homicide have a punishment worse than death, but there is no punishment worse than death. This system worked for a little, but then Athens went into turmoil. There were two major political parties, but neither could get the upper hand because of a smaller party that kept the bigger parties in check. This went on for so long that the people of Athens, in a desperate attempt to stop the craziness, called on Solon to create and entirely new constitution so this would never happen again. Solon did create a new constitution, and it made Athenian law courts completely democratic, without anyone knowing. Solon's law code formed official courts and juries, and he created specific punishments for each possible crime. And, (possibly unintentionally) he made court cases very frequent by wording the constitution ambiguously. Not only did his code lay the groundwork for all ancient Greek law systems to follow, it also laid the groundwork for the legal system in place in the USA today.