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How did national codifications weaken the unity of the European jus commune?
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Civil law
Justinian I, detail of a 6th-century mosaic at the Church of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy.
The jus communeāa shared European legal tradition rooted in Roman law, canon law, and common scholarly discourseāwas historically held together by a unified sense of European civilization.1
This unity was undermined by the rise of nationalism and the religious divisions of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. As European nations sought to stabilize and assert their hegemony, they pursued national codifications to unify their internal legal systems. These codifications weakened the jus commune by:1
- Creating National Boundaries: While codification unified the law within each individual nation, it simultaneously set that nation's legal system apart from all others.1
- Fragmenting Legal Traditions: The adoption of different codes at different times, combined with varying styles of legal learning, eventually split the civil-law family into distinct branches, such as the French (Romanist) and German (Germanic) traditions.1
- Replacing Common Discourse: The shift toward national statutes replaced the shared, transnational basis of study and discourse that had previously characterized the jus commune across the continent.1