A major purpose of these laws was to preserve slavery. In the first two years after the Civil War, white dominated southern legislatures passed Black Codes modeled after the earlier slave codes. They were particularly concerned with controlling movement and labor, as slavery had given way to a free labor system.
Bigger states had more power because they had more land population and power was given by land mass and population
Im not sure if this helps but when i looked it up i got The Advent of law, prerequisites and implications. Laws that were created by Hammurabi of Bablonian in the mid century 18th century and placed on stone tablets for all to see.
