Why did France adopt an objective test for commercial transactions in the 19th century?

In the 19th century, France adopted an objective test for commercial transactions, known as the acte de commerce, primarily for ideological reasons. Following the French Revolution, there was a strong desire to eliminate the pre-Revolutionary practice of differentiating legal rules based on the social status or class of individuals.

By shifting the focus to the nature of the transaction itself rather than the status of the person performing it, the French legal system sought to ensure that civil equality and equality before the law were maintained. This approach avoided the systemic inequality inherent in systems that granted special legal privileges or burdens based on one's social condition. While other countries, such as Germany, focused their commercial definitions on the status of the "merchant," the French objective test prioritized the character of the act to align with the revolutionary principles of a uniform, rational legal order.1