The age of codification

The legal phenomenon of codification, a term coined by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), was a product of natural-law theories applied to particular legal systems. The codification movement was founded on a belief in the human capacity to establish an all-inclusive legal system based on pure natural reason.

The phenomenon of codification was particularly significant in France in the years following the Revolution of 1789, but it was also important in Prussia, Bavaria, and Austria, and it spread to all civil-law countries to different degrees during the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth century. The French Civil Code of 1804 (still in force, although amended in many details) was the most prominent achievement of the natural-law codification movement and the intellectual legal articulation of national sovereignty. It was considered a monument to the perfection of reason. France, as one undivided nation, was to have a common law for all French citizens based on reason, not on customary law. Because the Civil Code had to be supported by reason, it had to be clear, concise, simple, and well structured. The commission in charge of the preparation of the Civil Code, led by Jean-Etienne-Marie Portalis (1746-1807), relied on the works of Robert Joseph Pothier (1699­1772). A legal expert of international repute, Pothier was able to join Roman law and French customary law on a rational basis. His Treatise on the Law of Obligations or Contracts, firmly articulated in accordance with Roman law, was instrumental for both the elaboration of the French Civil Code and for the expansion of Roman law principles around the world.

The Civil Code followed Napoleonic invasions and was the model for many other codes both in France and beyond. It had extraordinary success not only in Europe (Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Romania, and Greece) but also in Latin America, Turkey, Egypt, China, and Japan. Louisiana represents a remarkable case of civil law codifi­cation in the United States. American law has produced digests, restatements (without formal legal status), subject-specific codes, and statutory compilations, but the American tradition did not embrace intensely the idea of codification, which is more characteristic of the civil law tradition.