Legislative Intent Service's Engrossment

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Legislative Intent Service's Engrossment

September 30, 2005

French Influences
Summer 2005

Some of the 1872 California Codes contain references to early Louisiana case laws, which followed France’s Civil Code. On March 21, 1804, the Code Napoleon was voted into law. According to Cambridge’s Modern History, “The codification of French law . . . was the fulfillment of an aspiration, as old at least as the fifteenth century, and partially realised by the ordinances of kings and the textbooks of jurists—an aspiration for the legal unity of France, for ‘one weight, one measure, one law.’” (pp. 148)

Will and Ariel Durant’s “Age of Napoleon” stated that the Code Napoleon arose from “a nation in economic, political, religious, and moral disarray” after the coup de’etat of 1799. (p. 179) A Commission was formed and after 87 sittings, the Civil Code was taken up, title by title, with Napoleon presiding at 35 of the sittings. “The Code accepted and applied the basic principles of the Revolution: freedom of speech, worship, and enterprise, and equality of all before the law; the right of all to public trial by jury; the end of feudal dues and ecclesiastical tithes; and the validity of purchases made, from the state, of confiscated church or seigniorial property. But—following Roman law—the Code accepted the family as the unit and bastion of moral discipline and social order, and gave it a basis in power by reviving the patria potestas of ancient regimes . . . .” (p. 181)

The Code Napoleon completely replaced all prior French laws and customs to the point, as observed in 1928 by Sir Maurice Amos, that “it is remarkable to-day how rarely in the application and interpretation of the French Code, the attention of the judge is invited to any legislative text or judicial decision prior in date to 1804.” (page 224 of “The Code Napoleon and the Modern World”)

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