The Custom of Paris (French: Coutume de Paris) was one of France's regional custumals of civil law. It was the law of the land in Paris and the surrounding region in the 16th–18th centuries and was applied to French overseas colonies, including New France.[1] First written in 1507 and revised in 1580 and 1605, the Custom of Paris was a compilation and systematization of Renaissance-era customary law. Divided into 16 sections, it contained 362 articles concerning family and inheritance, property, and debt recovery.[2] It was the main source of law in New France from the earliest settlement, but other provincial customs were sometimes invoked in the early period.
The Custom of Paris was introduced in 1627 by the Company of One Hundred Associates. In 1664, under the royal charter of the French West India Company, Louis XIV made the Custom of Paris the only legitimate source of civil law in any French colony. In Quebec, however, it was not replaced until the Civil Code of Lower Canada entered into force in 1866.
- ^ Pagé, Dominique (1975). Petit dictionnaire de droit quebecois et canadien [A little dictionary of Quebecois and Canadian law]. Montreal: Fides. ISBN 978-2-7621-0542-1.
- ^ Dechêne 1992.