Napoleonic Code

Napoleonic Code, French civil code enacted on March 21, 1804, and still extant, with revisions. It was the main influence on the 19th-century civil codes of most countries of continental Europe and Latin America.

Forces behind codification

The demand for codification and, indeed, codification itself preceded the Napoleonic era (1799–1815). Diversity of laws was the dominant characteristic of the prerevolutionary legal order. Roman law governed in the south of France, whereas in the northern provinces, including Paris, a customary law had developed, based largely on feudal Frankish and Germanic institutions. Marriage and family life were almost exclusively within the control of the Roman Catholic Church and governed by canon law. In addition, starting in the 16th century, a growing number of matters were governed by royal decrees and ordinances as well as by a case law developed by the parlements. The situation inspired Voltaire to observe that a traveler in France “changes his law almost as often as he changes his horses.” Each area had its own collection of customs, and, despite efforts in the 16th and 17th centuries to organize and codify each of those local customary laws, there had been little success at national unification. Vested interests blocked efforts at codification, because reform would encroach upon their privileges.

After the French Revolution, codification became not only possible but almost necessary. Powerful groups such as the manors and the guilds had been destroyed; the secular power of the church had been suppressed; and the provinces had been transformed into subdivisions of the new national state. Political unification was paired with a growing national consciousness, which, in turn, demanded a new body of law that would be uniform for the entire state. The Napoleonic Code, therefore, was founded on the premise that, for the first time in history, a purely rational law should be created, free from all past prejudices and deriving its content from “sublimated common sense”; its moral justification was to be found not in ancient custom or monarchical paternalism but in its conformity to the dictates of reason.

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Civil law: The historical rise of civil law

Giving expression to those beliefs and to the needs of the revolutionary government, the National Assembly adopted a unanimous resolution on September 4, 1791, providing that “there shall be a code of civil laws common for the entire realm.” Further steps toward the actual drafting of a civil code, however, were first taken by the National Convention in 1793, which established a special commission headed by Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, duke de Parme, and charged it with the task of completing the project within a month. That commission prepared within six weeks of its creation a draft code consisting of 719 articles. Though truly revolutionary in both intent and content, the draft was rejected by the convention on the grounds that it was too technical and detailed to be easily understood by all citizens. A second, much-shorter, draft of 297 articles was offered in 1794, but it was little debated and had no success. Cambacérès’s persistent efforts produced a third draft (1796), containing 500 articles, but it was equally ill-fated. Another commission, established in 1799, presented a fourth scheme prepared in part by Jean-Ignace Jacqueminot.

Finally, the consulate, with Napoleon Bonaparte as first consul, resumed the legislative work, and a new commission was nominated. A final draft was submitted first to the legislative section and then to the plenary assembly of the newly reorganized Conseil d’État (“Council of State”). There it was extensively discussed, and with the steadfast participation and vigorous support of Napoleon as chairman, it was enacted into law piecemeal, in the form of 36 statutes passed between 1801 and 1803. On March 21, 1804, those statutes were consolidated in a single body of law—the Code Civil des Français. That title was changed to Code Napoléon in 1807 to honour the emperor who, as first consul of the republic, had brought to completion the monumental legislative undertaking. With the fall of the Napoleonic regime, the original title was restored in 1816. Reference to Napoleon was reinstated in the title of the code in 1852 by a decree of Louis-Napoléon (later Napoleon III), then president of the Second Republic. Since September 4, 1870, however, statutes have referred to it simply as the “civil code.”

Contents of the Napoleonic Code

Under the code all male citizens are equal: primogeniture, hereditary nobility, and class privileges are extinguished; civilian institutions are emancipated from ecclesiastical control; freedom of person, freedom of contract, and inviolability of private property are fundamental principles.

The first book of the code deals with the law of persons: the enjoyment of civil rights, the protection of personality, domicile, guardianship, tutorship, relations of parents and children, marriage, personal relations of spouses, and the dissolution of marriage by annulment or divorce. The code subordinated women to their fathers and husbands, who controlled all family property, determined the fate of children, and were favoured in divorce proceedings. Many of those provisions were reformed only in the second half of the 20th century. The second book deals with the law of things: the regulation of property rights—ownership, usufruct, and servitudes. The third book deals with the methods of acquiring rights: by succession, donation, marriage settlement, and obligations. In the last chapters, the code regulates a number of nominate contracts, legal and conventional mortgages, limitations of actions, and prescriptions of rights.

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With regard to obligations, the law establishes the traditional Roman-law categories of contract, quasi-contract, delict, and quasi-delict. Freedom to contract is not spelled out explicitly but is an underlying principle in many provisions.

Dissemination of the Napoleonic Code and its influence

The code was originally introduced into areas under French control in 1804: Belgium, Luxembourg, parts of western Germany, northwestern Italy, Geneva, and Monaco. It was later introduced into territories conquered by Napoleon: Italy, the Netherlands, the Hanseatic lands, and much of the remainder of western Germany and Switzerland. The code is still in use in Belgium, Luxembourg, and Monaco.

During the 19th century, the Napoleonic Code was voluntarily adopted in a number of European and Latin American countries, either in the form of simple translation or with considerable modifications. The Italian Civil Code of 1865, enacted after the unification of Italy, had a close but indirect relationship with the Napoleonic Code. The new Italian code of 1942 departed to a large extent from that tradition. In the early 19th century, the code was introduced into Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and it is still in force there. Bolivia and Chile followed closely the arrangement of the code and borrowed much of its substance. The Chilean code was in turn copied by Ecuador and Colombia, closely followed by Uruguay and Argentina. In Louisiana, the only civil-law state in the United States (which is otherwise bound by common law), the civil code of 1825 (revised in 1870 and still in force) is closely connected with the Napoleonic Code.

The influence of the Napoleonic Code was diminished at the turn of the century by the introduction of the German Civil Code (1900) and the Swiss Civil Code (1912); the former was adopted by Japan and the latter by Turkey. In the 20th century, codes in Brazil, Mexico, Greece, and Peru were products of a comparative method, with ideas borrowed from the German, French, and Swiss traditions.

More than two centuries after its promulgation, the Napoleonic Code is still living law in a great part of the world. History has thus partly justified the melancholic words uttered by Napoleon in exile: “My real glory is not the forty battles I won, for Waterloo’s defeat will destroy the memory of as many victories.…What nothing will destroy, what will live forever, is my Civil Code.”