how (if at all) did the Code of Hammurabi effect how normal (free) people in babylon actually settled disputes as they went about their normal lives? how would life in 1793 BC babylon be different from life in 1693 BC babylon?

by grapp
TheApiary

Probably not very much. We actually have a lot of records of court settlements from the ancient near east, and even the ones after Hammurabi's code generally don't cite it, and often, the kinds of cases described explicitly in Hammurabi's code don't seem to match the ones that most frequently occurred based on what we know of their records.