For Students
Napoleonic Code
France [1804]
Also known as: Civil Code, Code Civil, Code Napoléon
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. 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 ...(100 of 1261 words)