Napoleonic Code

Civil Code of the French
Code civil des Français
Legislature of the French Consulate
CitationCode civil
Territorial extentFrance
Enacted byCorps législatif
Signed byFirst Consul Napoleon Bonaparte
Effective21 March 1804 (1804-03-21)
Introduced byJacques de Maleville
Jean Portalis
Félix Bigot de Préameneu
François Tronchet
Repeals
Civil Code of the French Republic (1803)
Amended by
Law 2019-2022 on 1 September 2020
Status: Amended

The Napoleonic Code (French: Code Napoléon), officially the Civil Code of the French (French: Code civil des Français; simply referred to as Code civil), is the French civil code established during the French Consulate in 1804 and still in force in France, although heavily and frequently amended since its inception.[1] Although Napoleon himself was not directly involved in the drafting of the Code, as it was drafted by a commission of four eminent jurists,[2] he chaired many of the commission's plenary sessions,[3] and his support was crucial to its passage into law.[4]

The code, with its stress on clearly written and accessible law, was a major milestone in the abolition of the previous patchwork of feudal laws.[5] Historian Robert Holtman regards it as one of the few documents that have influenced the whole world.[2] The Napoleonic Code is often portrayed to be one of the most widespread systems of law in the world, claimed to be in force in various forms in about 120 countries, but many of those countries are civil code countries that had their own version of their civil code for centuries.[6]

The Napoleonic Code was not the first legal code to be established in a European country with a civil-law legal system; it was preceded by the Codex Maximilianeus bavaricus civilis (Bavaria, 1756), the Allgemeines Landrecht (Prussia, 1794), and the West Galician Code (Galicia, then part of Austria, 1797).[citation needed] It was, however, the first modern legal code to be adopted with a pan-European scope, and it strongly influenced the law of many of the countries formed during and after the Napoleonic Wars.[7][2] The Napoleonic Code influenced developing countries outside Europe attempting to modernise and defeudalise their countries through legal reforms, such as those in the Middle East,[8] while in Latin America the Spanish and Portuguese had established their own versions of the civil code.[9]

The Napoleonic Code in the Historical Museum of the Palatinate in Speyer
  1. ^ Code civil des Français: édition originale et seule officielle. Paris: L'Imprimerie de la République. 1804. Retrieved 28 November 2016 – via Gallica.
  2. ^ a b c Robert B. Holtman, The Napoleonic Revolution (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981)
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Foot01 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Roberts, Andrew, Napoleon: A Life,"Lawgiver"
  5. ^ Lobingier, Charles Sumner (1918). "Napoleon and His Code" (PDF). Harvard Law Review. 32 (2): 114–134. doi:10.2307/1327640. JSTOR 1327640.
  6. ^ "The Napoleonic Code | History of Western Civilization II". courses.lumenlearning.com. Retrieved 30 January 2021.
  7. ^ 29 - The French Revolution and the Law, in Part IV - The Age of Reforms (1750–1814), Cambridge University Press, 31 July 2017; Antonio Padoa-Schioppa, Translated by Caterina Fitzgerald
  8. ^ Mohamed A.M. Ismail (2016). Globalization and New International Public Works Agreements in Developing Countries: An Analytical Perspective. Routledge. p. 19. ISBN 9781317127031 – via Google Books. All civil codes of Arab Middle Eastern states are based on Napoleonic Codes and were influenced by Egyptian legislation
  9. ^ Matta, Liana Fiol (1992). "Civil Law and Common Law in the Legal Method of Puerto Rico". The American Journal of Comparative Law. 40 (4): 783–815. doi:10.2307/840794. JSTOR 840794.