Napoleonic Code

The French civil code of 1804, the most influential code in legal history

Overview

Napoleon's commission distilled revolutionary ideals, equality before the law, property, secular civil status, and contract freedom, into a compact code promulgated in 1804. Clarity made it teachable, and conquest carried it across Europe and into Latin America, the Middle East through the Egyptian mixed courts, and Louisiana. Its family provisions subordinated married women, revised only across the twentieth century. It remains the base of dozens of legal systems and the symbol of codification itself. It reduced family law to civil marriage and divorce, revolutionary breaks with canon law rules.