Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The civil law in European codes
- 2 ‘A token of independence’: debates on the history and development of Scots law
- 3 The Scottish civil code project
- 4 Scots law in Europe: the case of contract
- 5 Scottish property: a system of Civilian principle. But could it be codified?
- 6 ‘… Quae ad ius Cathalanicum pertinet’: the civil law of Catalonia, ius commune and the legal tradition
- 7 The codification of Catalan civil law
- 8 Unification of the European law of obligations and codification of Catalan civil law
- 9 From revocation to non-opposability: modern developments of the Paulian action
- 10 Epistle to Catalonia: romance and rentabilidad in an anglophone mixed jurisdiction
- 11 Estonia and the new civil law
- 12 The positive experience of the Civil Code of Quebec in the North American common law environment
- 13 From the code civil du bas Canada (1866) to the code civil Quebecois (1991), or from the consolidation to the reform of the law: a reflection for Catalonia
- 14 The evolution of the Greek civil law: from its Roman–Byzantine origins to its contemporary European orientation
- Index
1 - The civil law in European codes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The civil law in European codes
- 2 ‘A token of independence’: debates on the history and development of Scots law
- 3 The Scottish civil code project
- 4 Scots law in Europe: the case of contract
- 5 Scottish property: a system of Civilian principle. But could it be codified?
- 6 ‘… Quae ad ius Cathalanicum pertinet’: the civil law of Catalonia, ius commune and the legal tradition
- 7 The codification of Catalan civil law
- 8 Unification of the European law of obligations and codification of Catalan civil law
- 9 From revocation to non-opposability: modern developments of the Paulian action
- 10 Epistle to Catalonia: romance and rentabilidad in an anglophone mixed jurisdiction
- 11 Estonia and the new civil law
- 12 The positive experience of the Civil Code of Quebec in the North American common law environment
- 13 From the code civil du bas Canada (1866) to the code civil Quebecois (1991), or from the consolidation to the reform of the law: a reflection for Catalonia
- 14 The evolution of the Greek civil law: from its Roman–Byzantine origins to its contemporary European orientation
- Index
Summary
The European codes: background and significance
I have been asked to discuss the civil law in European codes. This is not as straightforward a task as it may appear at first glance. We should, at the outset, therefore reflect on the background, scope and significance of the terms used in the title of my chapter. A code, or codification, in the modern technical sense of the word, is a peculiar kind of statute. Like all other statutes, it is enacted by a legislature, and its application is therefore backed by the authority of the state for which that legislature is competent to make laws. Its characteristic features are, firstly, that a codification must aim at being comprehensive. It has to provide a regulation not only for a number of specific issues but has to cover a field of law in its entirety. Secondly, a codification constitutes an attempt to present its subject matter as a logically consistent whole of legal rules and institutions. It provides both the conceptual framework and intellectual fulcrum for any further doctrinal refinement and judicial or legislative development of the law.
Codification, as outlined in these few sentences, is a specific historical phenomenon that originated in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century legal science. It was an enormously influential idea, that managed, within hardly more than 150 years, to recast the entire legal tradition on the European continent. It was much less successful in England.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Regional Private Laws and Codification in Europe , pp. 18 - 59Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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