# Doctrinal and Legal Texts Hub Index for `Works/Doctrinal and Legal Texts/` — formal instruments that establish law or doctrine, treated as authored artifacts. Folder created 2026-08-26 to home five previously unfiled root pages. ## Legal codes - Code of Hammurabi (c. 1754 BCE) — roughly 280 laws on a Babylonian stele; among the earliest surviving complete codes - The Twelve Tables (c. 451–450 BCE) — the foundation of Roman law - [[South Carolina Declaration of Secession]] (1860) — the state instrument naming slavery as the cause, and the KB's most-cited primary-source rebuttal to "states' rights" ## Papal encyclicals - [[Rerum Novarum]] (1891) — Leo XIII on capital and labour; the origin of Catholic social teaching - [[Magnifica Humanitas]] (2026) — Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, on safeguarding the human person in the age of artificial intelligence ## The boundary This folder holds instruments that **claim binding force** — a code, a declaration, an encyclical. Compare [[Manifestos Hub]], where texts claim founding authority they do not yet possess. The distinction is enforceability, not ambition. US institutional documents that function as standing architecture — the Constitution, the [[Emancipation Proclamation]], the [[Gettysburg Address]] — live in `Foundations/Core Documents/`, not here. ## Neighbours - [[Manifestos Hub]] · [[Manifestos and Founding Documents Hub]] - [[Speeches Hub]] — spoken instruments - [[Works Hub]] — the master index