Replies

From Encyclopedia Online:

Louisiana is the only state whose legal system is based on Roman civil law as opposed to British common law. Technically, it is known as "Code Napoleon" or The Napoleonic Code. It is simply the aforementioned Roman civil law in written form, in order to be applied uniformly, and understood by everyone.

From McGill (see cite below):

Louisiana was first subjected to French Edicts, Ordinances and the Custom of Paris by charters issued to companies of merchant adventurers in 1712 and 1717, which laws remained in force when the territory became a royal colony in 1731. After Louisiana's cession to Spain in 1763, French laws remained in forced until 1769, when they were officially replaced by Spanish laws and institutions,[90] including the Nueva Recopilación de Castilla (1567) and the Recopilación de Leyes de los Reinos de las Indias (a rearrangement of major legal texts up to 1680), and, in default of a specific rule in a later enactment, the Siete Partidas (a compilation of laws, based on the Justinian compilation and the doctrine of the Glossators, made under King Alfonso X in 1265 and formally enacted under King Alfonso XI in 1348). Following the territory's retrocession to France in 1800, Spanish law continued in force, because France assumed sovereignty for only twenty days in 1803 before the United States took possession of Louisiana on 20 December of that year.[91]

After the transfer to the U.S., pressure came from incoming Americans to impose the common law in Louisiana, particularly because six different compilations of Spanish laws existed and it was unclear which of over 20,000 individual laws of Spain applied in the territory. Thanks, however, to the leadership of Edward LIVINGSTON, a New York common lawyer who had become a convert to the superiority of the civil law after moving to New Orleans, and following a political crisis surrounding the matter, a two-man committee was mandated by the Louisiana legislature to prepare a compilation of the civil law applicable in the "Territory of Orleans".[92] The product was a digest,[93] known as the Louisiana Civil Code of 1808, which was approved even by Governor CLAIBORNE, who had formerly been a major advocate of the common law.

The Digest of 1808 was largely inspired by the revolutionary ideas of France, gleaned from the French Civil Code of 1804 and its preparatory works, approximately 70% of its 2,156 articles being based on those sources. The remainder of the text was derived from Spanish law and institutions, which rules were retained in the event of conflict with French-inspired provisions.[94]

Despite the Digest, confusion persisted as to which specific laws applied in Louisiana. [95] Another committee was therefore instructed by the legislature to revise the civil code and add to it any missing laws still found to be in force. The result was the Louisiana Civil Code of 1825,[96] which was modelled very closely on the French Civil Code, most of its 3,522 articles having an exact equivalent in that Code.[97] It was designed to replace all pre-existing law, although the courts refused to give it quite the sweeping effect that had been intended.[98]

The 1808 and 1825 Codes were both drafted in French and translated into English, after which they were published in both languages, both versions being official. The enabling statute of the 1808 Code[99] required consultation of both language versions in the event of ambiguity of any provision. The 1825 Code, on the other hand, was merely published in both French and English, without any provision in its enabling statute for resolving conflicts. Because the French text was the original, however, and because the translation was known to have errors, the French version came to be regarded as controlling.[100]

A third Civil Code was promulgated in 1870,[101] which changed the numbering of articles, but otherwise essentially re-enacted the 1825 Code, except for inserting amendments required to take account of the abolition of slavery after the American Civil War, as well as amendments and new laws enacted since 1825 which affected codal provisions. Although the 1870 Code was published only in English, it was the general view that the French texts of the articles of the 1825 Code which were unamended continued to be determinative in the event of ambiguity.[102] A Compiled Edition of the three Codes was published in 1938.[103]

Beginning in 1976, the Louisiana State Law Institute, now responsible for the Code, has secured the adoption by the Louisiana Legislature of various partial revisions.[104] Among the most important of these is the new Book IV on Conflict of Laws (Articles 3514-3549 c.c.) adopted in 1991.[105]

From Mixed jurisdictions : common law vs civil law (codified and uncodified) by William Tetley, Q.C. [*]

Professor of Law, McGill University, Montreal (Canada); Distinguished Visiting Professor of Maritime and Commercial Law, Tulane University (United States of America); Counsel to Langlois Gaudreau O'Connor of Montreal.