DEUT1092 Not only is it the downtrodden whose cause the Torah champions as part of its insistence on substantive justice but it is all members of society who must be treated justly. The Torah, therefore, includes lengthy lists of civil and criminal laws for society as a whole, (See, for example, Exodus 21-24 and Deuteronomy 20-25) and the later rabbis developed this area of Jewish law extensively, beginning with the Mishnah’s Order Nezikin. The Torah itself, and the Rabbis even more, appreciated the fact that justice, to become a reality in people's lives, could not be left as a pious hope but must rather be translated into concrete norms. By presenting specific cases, both the biblical and rabbinic traditions made the demands of justice clear and binding. It was not enough to require a person who finds a lost object, for example, to return it (as in Deuteronomy 22:1-3). What if not one, but several, people claim it? How shall you determine the real owner? What happens if you cannot? What should you do, on the other hand, if nobody comes forward to claim the object? Must you keep it? If so, for how long? To what extent must you go to publicize that you have it? If it requires care (for example, if it is an animal), must you spend your own money to provide that care? To what extent? May you use the object in the interim? Returning a lost object is a relatively simple demand of justice. But as these questions demonstrate, even a straightforward requirement such as that easily becomes complicated -- and the rabbis, in fact, devoted an entire chapter of the Mishnah and Talmud to this issue (chapter two of Bava Metzi’a) Without that discussion, the Torah’s imperative to return a lost object would remain imprecise and unworkable, demanding, in some understandings too much, and in others, too little to make this aspect of justice part of an ongoing practice within Jewish communal life.