the Codecivil in Europe
2 Our main concern is with the history of law in France and in the Belgian and Dutch provinces, but the rest of Europe will not be left out of account. That would in any case be impossible.
The notion of national law —a single, exclusive code and a single, exclusive system of national courts for each country - is a recent and transient phenomenon. For centuries law had been local or regional (customs and charters) and also cosmopolitan and supra-national (the Roman law taught at the universities, the canon law of the church). And after the Second World War came the rise of EuroÂpean law, which involved the creation of a supra-national legisÂlature and courts, to which national statutes and courts were subordinate.Historically, the major elements of the law belong to a common European inheritance: ancient and medieval Roman law, canon law, old Germanic law, feudal law, medieval municipal law, the natural law of early modern times. All these elements had their influence in different degrees on all the countries of Europe.