French Civil Code

Continental codes have been presented, following in the French model’s footsteps, as a determining technique to achieve legal unification and legal positivism. From this perspective, codes would not be compatible with non-legal sources (custom, judicial precedent, legal doctrine) and with legal diversity. Looking at the Spanish case one comes to the conclusion that these ideas are myths or, at least, are not entirely true. They may be true for the French case or even for other European jurisdictions, but they failed when applied to Spain. This may explain why non-Spanish legal historians and comparative lawyers seem to find it difficult to understand the Codification of Civil law in Spain. On the one hand, the French influenced over the Spanish civil code is exaggerated. On the other, it would be unimaginable that the French civil code would have supposed to be applicable in defect of regional laws or customs, as it is the case in Spain. Besides, the Napoleon code did not recognize explicitly the custom as a legal source, whereas in the Spanish code did. It is undeniable that drafters of the Spanish civil code had in mind and used the French model, but the final outcome was quite unique.  Spain shows that codification does not necessarily imply legal unification. In fact, Spain constitutes the only case in which the civil code whose application is just subsidiary, that is, when regional laws do not contain a legal rule applicable to solve a legal dispute. In explaining this from a historical and comparative perspective, non-Spanish scholars usually identify regional laws (Derechos forales) with fueros, customs and local laws, but this is not entirely true. The problem is that no other civil law jurisdictions can be used as a model to describe the Spanish case, which on this matter is unique. The paper focuses on the uniqueness of the Spanish case in codifying its civil law, dispelling some myths and misunderstandings on the notion of codification in general, and on the Spanish civil code in particular.

– Comment la législation nouvelle contenue dans le Code civil at -elle été appliquée en pays de droit écrit ? Les auteurs du Code, en attribuant aux juges l'interprétation par voie de doctrine, l'ont investi d'une tâche immense, celle de déterminer le sens des lois et d'en pallier les insuffisances. Prenant pour guide les notes inédites d'un magistrat à la cour d'appel d'Agen – le procureur général Lébé – et les divers recueils de jurisprudence publiés au XIX e siècle, l'article décrit la méthode d'application du droit dans les nombreux cas où les règles légales suscitaient des difficultés d'interprétation, l'influence des différentes sources, ainsi que les résistances opposées à la jurisprudence divergente de la Cour de cassation. Abstract. – How was the new legislation, contained in the civil Code, applied in the country of written law ? By giving the judge the role of a « Minister of equity » the authors of the Code gave him the huge task of determining the sense of the laws as well as fill their gaps. Using the unpublished manuscripts of a magistrate at the Court of Appeal of Agen-the general prosecutor Lébé-and the various casebooks published in the XIXth century, the article describes the method of application of the law in the numerous cases in which the legal rules made the interpretation difficult, the influence of the different authorities and the resistance opposed to the divergent jurisprudence of the Supreme Court.

BiBlioGraPhie BettA e., 2006, Animare la vita. Disciplina della nascita tra medicina e morale nell'Ottocento, Bologna, Il Mulino, 367 p. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 218 p. Brière s., 1983, Infanticide du nouveau-né : définition d'une problématique et des sources à exploiter, Université de Paris I, DEA, 22 p.

The development of the law of riparian rights in the Anglo-American world in the nineteenth century has been analyzed from several points of view, including economic property theory and Marxian legal history. Transnational aspects of the subject have not been neglected, as some have highlighted the transatlantic framework in which this body of doctrine developed, and others have examined the use of Continental, civil law sources by some of the American jurists responsible for that development. Yet the inter-imperial aspect of this story, in particular the meeting of the laws of the British and French Empires, has gone unremarked.

This paper examines the crossed histories of English common law, French civil law, and American law in the jurisprudence of water rights in Lower Canada/Canada East/Quebec in the mid-nineteenth century, and the influence of this jurisprudence on the developing water law of the British Empire.

À partir d’une enquête menée sur des couples français recourant à des mères porteuses en Amérique du Nord, cet article analyse la façon les individus composent avec des interdits juridiques, des blocages administratifs et des réprobations morales pour mener à bien des projets familiaux externalisant la grossesse hors du couple parental. Ces pratiques de parenté qui conduisent les candidats à la paternité et à la maternité à recourir à des techniques de reproduction assistées à l’étranger interrogent la porosité des frontières et donnent à voir de nombreux ajustements politiques et moraux. Les entretiens approfondis conduits avec les parents d’intention révèlent ainsi qu’il ne suffit pas que l’enfant ait un ou deux parents français pour obtenir à son tour la nationalité française. Le traitement juridique et administratif en France des enfants nés d’une gestation pour autrui conduit à ce qu’inscription dans une lignée et acquisition de la nationalité soient tout à fait déliées.

Based on research on French couples resorting to surrogate mothers in North America, this article analyses how individuals compromise with legal bans, administrative hold-ups, and moral reprobation to successfully realize family plans externalizing pregnancy outside the parental couple. These kinship practices that lead hopeful fathers and mothers to resort to assisted pregnancy techniques abroad raise questions about the porosity of borders and reveal numerous political and moral adjustments. In-depth interviews with would-be parents thus reveal that having one or two French parents is not enough for a child to obtain French citizenship. The legal and administrative treatment in France of children born of surrogacy is such that being placed in a line of descent and acquiring French nationality are completely disconnected.

Abstract: Since the French Civil Code is the first codified civil law, it has affected many legal systems and inspired the Swiss Law, which is the source of the Turkish Code of Obligations. For this reason, in the present study, the seller’s warranty of quality and fitness for defective goods in French Law is handled in comparison with the Swiss-Turkish Law System. After a general introduction, firstly, the material and formal conditions of the warranty of quality and fitness were focused. Subsequently, the results of the liability regime for defective goods were examined. In this context, similar to the Swiss-Turkish Law, the right to terminate the contract, the right to reduce the price and the rights to repair or replace the object has been explained; afterwards, the possibility of compensation for damages incurred due to defective performance was analyzed. Finally, conclusions and recommendations in terms of Turkish Law are summarized in the final section.

Öz: Fransız Medeni Kanunu, kodifiye edilmiş ilk medeni kanun olma özelliği taşıması sebebiyle, pek çok hukuk sistemini etkilemiş ve Türk Borçlar Kanunu'na kaynaklık eden İsviçre Hukuku'na ilham vermiştir. Bu sebeple, mevcut çalışmada, Fransız Hukuku'nda satıcının ayıptan sorumluluğu, İsviçre-Türk Hukuku ile karşılaştırmalı olarak ele alınmıştır. Genel bir takdimin ardından, ilk olarak ayıptan sorumluluk rejiminin maddi ve şekli şartları değerlendirilmiş; akabinde, ayıptan sorumluluk rejiminin sonuçları incelenmiştir. Bu kapsamda, İsviçre-Türk Hukuku'na benzer şekilde, sözleşmeden dönme, bedel indirimi, satılanın onarılması veya ayıpsız benzeriyle değişim hakları açıklanmış; devamında, alıcının ayıplı ifa sebebiyle maruz kaldığı zararlar için öngörülen giderim imkanına mercek tutulmuştur. Son olarak, varılan kanaatler ve Türk Hukuku açısından tavsiyeler, sonuç bölümünde özetlenmiştir.

The aim of the contribution is to examine the influence and significance of the French Code Civil for the Croatian legal culture from the beginning of the 19th century until the present day. The introductory part presents the basic features of the Code Civil as an exceptionally important civil code belonging to the European continental legal family. In that context, the most important characteristics of the Code Civil are briefly outlined, as well as its foundation in Roman legal tradition and its vital influence on civil law legislation in many European and non-European states in the 19th and 20th century.
The central part explores the enactment of the French Code Civil in individual Croatian territories (Istria, Dalmatia, Dubrovnik, Civil Croatia and Croatian Military Frontier) starting from 1806, and its validity in the Croatian lands belonging to the Illyrian provinces (1809–1814) until the end of the French rule, that is until the gradual enactment of the Austrian Allgemeines bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (ABGB) (1814–1820). In that context, some other regulations that came into force during the French rule are briefly addressed, primarily Code de Commerce from 1807 which – unlike the short-term validity of the Code Civil – remained a source of the Croatian maritime commercial law until 1978.
In the final part of the contribution the influence of the Code Civil on modern Croatian private law is analysed, especially in the sphere of law of obligations, as a particularly important aspect of the reception of French legal culture in the Croatian legal system in the 21st century.

This article focuses on the attitude of the Polish legal elite regarding the adaptation of French civil law introduced on the Polish territories in the Duchy of Warsaw, established by Napoleon in 1807. While addressing the Polish example, it underscores the universal nature of problems engendered by legal transfer and by the social reactions to foreign solutions. It sheds light on the state of mind of Polish enlightened elites, on their approach toward new legal instruments and on the challenges of adapting them to the socioeconomic conditions of a semi-peripheral country. The Polish situation in the early 19th century provides evidence that some representatives of the late-Enlightenment generation remained attached to the universalist, all human vision of civilizational progress and
shared natural law instruments for its accomplishment. On the other hand, in reaction to this attitude, the opposite view had already started to crystallize. It pointed to the uniqueness of conditions of development in any given country and nation. According to this view, civil law should account for this specificity and be adjusted to the national character.

This paper examines the diverse responses of the German states to the Code Napoleon at the beginning of the nineteenth century. These states differed both in the extent to which they adopted the Code, and the extent to which they retained the Code after Napoleon's influence waned. In order to identify the causes of adoption and retention of the Code, we use fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). This method is now well established in comparative research in the social sciences but has been little used in comparative legal analysis. We find the following to be among the conditions relevant to the reception of the Code: territorial diversity, control by Napoleon, central state institutions, a feudal economy and society, liberal (enlightented absolutist) rule, nativism among the governing elites and popular anti-French sentiment. The paper also serves to demonstrate the potential of fsQCA as a method for comparative lawyers.

Il saggio discute il tema della giurisprudenza normativa nell’attuale assetto di ricodificazione del diritto contrattuale, esaminando la regola pretoria che afferma l’inesigibilità della clause résolutoire quando sia stata esercitata in modo contrario a bonne foi. Sebbene tale preclusione non sia stata recepita nel testo che il nuovo Code civil ha previsto per la clause résolutoire (art. 1225), il suo mantenimento è riconosciuto dalla dottrina francese sulla base della regola generale che impone alle parti di eseguire il contratto secondo bonne foi (art. 1104). Ciò dimostra che anche un sistema ricodificato riconosce al giudice un ruolo decisivo nel correggere i risultati di una applicazione strictum ius.

Au cours de ces journées bilatérales franco-espagnoles différents thèmes
essentiels du nouveau droit des obligations ont été présentés, sans
exhaustivité, avec le regard tantôt critique tantôt approbateur de nos
amis juristes espagnols, au moment même où ces derniers travaillent
intensément en vue de réformer leur propre droit des obligations.

Scotto, Pablo (2020). "Lo civil en el Código napoleónico y la libertad de los modernos", Cuadernos Electrónicos de Filosofía del Derecho, nº 43, pp. 285-304.
https://ojs.uv.es/index.php/CEFD/article/view/17128/pdf

RESUMEN: El propósito de este artículo es explicar el cambio de significado que lo civil sufre en el Código napoleónico. Me centro, a tal efecto, en el discurso preliminar pronunciado por Portalis en la presentación del proyecto de 1801, y comparo su concepción con la de Montesquieu. Para este último, las leyes civiles son aquellas que regulan las relaciones de los ciudadanos entre sí, a fin de garantizar el mantenimiento y la unidad de la comunidad política. Portalis pretende, en cambio, que esta misma función de cemento cívico la desempeñe un Código civil que se ocupa únicamente de esa esfera privada en la que los individuos disfrutan de su propiedad. Como muestro en la conclusión, Benjamin Constant asumirá este cambio y lo llevará un paso más allá, identificando el mencionado disfrute privado con la verdadera libertad de los tiempos modernos.

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this paper is to explain the change in meaning of the civil sphere in the Napoleonic Code. To this end, I focus on the introductory speech given by Portalis at the presentation of the 1801 project, and I compare his conception with Montesquieu's. For the latter, civil laws are those regulating citizens' relations with each other, in order to guarantee the maintenance and unity of the political community. Portalis, by contrast, intends to have this civic engagement function performed by a Civil Code that deals solely with that private sphere in which individuals enjoy their property. As I show in the conclusion, Benjamin Constant will assume this change and take it one step further, identifying the aforementioned private enjoyment with the true liberty of modern times.