Napoleonic Code, Frenchcivil code enacted on March 21, 1804, and stillextant, with revisions. It was the main influence on the 19th-century civil codes of most countries of continentalEurope andLatin America.

Forces behind codification

The demand forcodification 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 ofFrance, whereas in the northern provinces, includingParis, a customarylaw had developed, based largely on feudal Frankish and Germanic institutions.Marriage and family life were almost exclusively within the control of theRoman Catholic Church and governed bycanon 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 theparlements. The situation inspiredVoltaire 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 wouldencroach upon their privileges.

After theFrench Revolution, codification became not only possible but almost necessary. Powerful groups such as themanors and theguildshad been destroyed; thesecular 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 nationalconsciousness, which, in turn, demanded a new body of law that would be uniform for the entire state. The Napoleonic Code, therefore, was founded on thepremise that, for the first time in history, a purely rational law should be created, free from all pastprejudices and deriving its content from “sublimated common sense”; itsmoral 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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Giving expression to those beliefs and to the needs of the revolutionary government, theNational 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 theNational Convention in 1793, which established a special commission headed byJean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, duke de Parme, and charged it with the task of completing the project within a month. Thatcommission 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, theconsulate, withNapoleon 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 theplenary assembly of the newly reorganizedConseil 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 ofLouis-Napoléon (later Napoleon III), then president of theSecond 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 fromecclesiastical 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 ofcivil 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 ordivorce. 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, andservitudes. The third book deals with the methods ofacquiring 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 ofcontract, 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 westernGermany, northwesternItaly,Geneva, andMonaco. It was later introduced into territories conquered by Napoleon: Italy, theNetherlands, theHanseatic lands, and much of the remainder of western Germany andSwitzerland. 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. TheItalian 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 intoHaiti and theDominican Republic, and it is still in force there.Bolivia andChile followed closely the arrangement of the code and borrowed much of its substance. The Chilean code was in turn copied byEcuador andColombia, closely followed byUruguay andArgentina. InLouisiana, the only civil-law state in theUnited States (which is otherwise bound bycommon 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 wasdiminished at the turn of the century by the introduction of theGerman Civil Code (1900) and theSwiss Civil Code (1912); the former was adopted byJapan and the latter byTurkey. In the 20th century, codes inBrazil,Mexico,Greece, andPeru 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, forWaterloo’s defeat will destroy the memory of as many victories.…What nothing will destroy, what will live forever, is my Civil Code.”