Napoleonic Codes and National Codes in Europe
The age of Codiflcations truly began with the Code civiLi which in common parlance became the aNapoleonic Code.” In France and in the parts of Europe occupied by Napoleon’s armies the picture was enriched with the promulgation of a Code deprocedure in 1806, a Code de commerce in 1807, a Codepenal in 1810, and a Code destruction crimi- nelle in 1811.
The French may originally have hoped that the Code civil would be extended throughout Europe, following the fortunes and the victories ofNapoleon’s armies. If such a hope ever existed, events showed it to be illusory.
On first inspection those initial expectations seemed justified. The Code civil was translated into Italian, and Napoleon extended it to the Kingdom of Italy in March 1806, to the Principality of Lucca (1806- 13) in May of that same year, to the Kingdom of Naples (1805-15) in October 1808 (with the exclusion of provisions on divorce), and to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1808.
In two areas, however, the Napoleonic Code met with opposition and resistance. In Prussia the Landrecht of 1794 was still in effect, and it continued in force until 1900, although it should be noted that it lacked that fundamental characteristic of a code, the unity of the juridical subject for whom the code is destined. In Austria a modern and excellent general civil code (the Allgememes burgerliches Gesetz- buch) was promulgated in 1811. That body of laws enjoyed a success equal to that of the French Code civil because it too expressed the principle that the law must be equal for all citizens of the state.
In 1814, when the Congress of Vienna ushered in the period of the “Restoration,” the Code civil seemed doomed. In Lombardy-Venetia it was substituted on 1 January 1816 by the Austrian Civil Code of 1811. In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples was once more joined to Sicily) it was replaced by a new series of codes covering civil, penal, and commercial law and civil and penal procedure.
All these were promulgated in 1819 under the title CodiceperloRegno delleDue Sicilie. The Duchy of Parma had a new Codiee Civile in 1820. Tuscany turned back the clock to reinstate Roman and canon law and the “laws” of the Grand Duchy that had been passed before 1808. In Piedmont, and more generally in the Kingdom of Sardinia, which included Piedmont, Liguria, and Sardinia, the Code civil was eliminated (although not in Liguria). On the island of Sardinia itself, after a number of abortive attempts between 1817 and 1827, a body of Leggi civili e criminali pel Regno di Sardegna—not really a code but materials selected and organized for use in legal practice—was promulgated in 1827 and put into force on 1 January 1828. In 1837 a true Codice Civile per gli Stati di SuaMaestd URe di Sardegna^ usually referred to as the Codice Mertino was promulgated by King Charles Albert for the three regions that made up the kingdom of the House of Savoy. For its reinstatement of some institutions that had been eliminated from the French and Austrian codes (for example, the Cxclusiopropter dotem of daughters from paternal succession) the Albertine Code can be considered one of the most important Italian manifestations of the Restoration, even though its incontestable character as a code made a notable contribution to the legislative revival in Europe.Thus in Italy the French Code civil lost its value as positive law as the various pre-unification Italian states provided, in various ways, for the codification of their laws. Nonetheless (and this is true not only in Italy), the French code remained a model useful for two distinct but connected reasons. On the one hand, it continued to bear concrete and prestigious witness to the new idea of the code and to the ?Vocation of the century” for “the codified formulation of the law.”[14] It expressed and incorporated a new manner of regulating and ordering society; it reflected and satisfied the triumphant bourgeoisie’s need for stability and certitude, a need that it felt and imposed in order to guarantee its own existence, its role, and its political and professional victories.
On the other hand, the Code civil suggested specific contents, definitions of institutions, and normative solutions, which meant that its written precepts could be borrowed for provisions to be inserted in the various codes that the European states were drawing up during the first decades of the nineteenth century.This is what happened in Italy between 1863 and 1865. After the unification of Italy, the new kingdom under the House of Savoy thought it necessary to give a civil code to the nation—among other reasons, in order to express the new political reality in a Uniformjuridical discipline and to help standardize procedures that had varied from one region to another under previous legal systems. The commission charged with this difficult task, presided over by two successive ministers of justice, Giuseppe Pisanelli and Giuseppe Vacca, completed its task in short order. They had an excellent model in the French Code civil of 1804, and they followed it: In particular, the commission borrowed from its model the central and structuring idea that it is useful and possible, hence rightful, to promulgate a code valid for all citizens that provides a law that is the same for all; furthermore, that it is rightful to attempt to discipline the society of the nation in order to help it prosper in such a way that the individual within that society can be safeguarded and guided in his clearly codified rights and in every moment of his life and every aspect of his legitimate activities.
The Italian legislators also mined their French model for innumerable specific articles, with the result that entire sectors of Italian civil life came to be regulated by the new Codice Civile Italiano along normative lines broadly similar or identical to those of the French Code civil of 1804.
The first Codice Civile of a united Italy was promulgated on 25 June 1865 and put into force on 1 January 1866. It was followed in 1883 by a noteworthy Codice di Commercio.
6.
More on the topic Napoleonic Codes and National Codes in Europe:
- Bellomo Manlio. The Common Legal Past of Europe: 1000-1800. The Catholic University of America Press,1995. — 273 p., 1995
- Geographic Distribution of the Civil Law
- THE CODE CIVIL AND THE SCHOOL OF EXEGESIS
- The Codification of Civil Law in Germany
- The Codification of Civil Law in France
- 7.7.3 The Ius Commune in Italy, the Iberian Peninsula and the Netherlands
- GERMAN UNIFICATION AND THE CIVIL CODE OF 19oo
- 7.7.1 The Reception of Roman Law in France
- 2. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ATTEMPTS AT JUDICIARY REFORM
- Ando Clifford (ed.). Citizenship and Empire in Europe, 200-1900: Antonine Constitution after 1800 Years. Franz Steiner Verlag,2016. — 261 p., 2016