Napoleonic Code

The Napoleonic Code (French: Code Napoléon), officially the Civil Code of the French (French: Code civil des Français; simply referred to as Code civil), is the French civil code established during the French Consulate period in 1804 and still in force in France, although heavily and frequently amended since its inception.

Napoleon himself was not involved in the drafting of the Code, as it was drafted by a commission of four eminent jurists and entered into force on 21 March 1804. The code, with its stress on clearly written and accessible law, was a major milestone in the abolition of the previous patchwork of feudal laws. Historian Robert Holtman regards it as one of the few documents that have influenced the whole world. The Napoleonic Code is often portrayed to be one of the most widespread system of law in the world, claimed to be in force in various forms in about 120 countries, but many of those countries are civil code countries that had their own version of their civil code for centuries.

The Napoleonic Code was not the first legal code to be established in a European country with a civil-law legal system; it was preceded by the Codex Maximilianeus bavaricus civilis (Bavaria, 1756), the Allgemeines Landrecht (Prussia, 1794), and the West Galician Code (Galicia, then part of Austria, 1797). It was, however, the first modern legal code to be adopted with a pan-European scope, and it strongly influenced the law of many of the countries formed during and after the Napoleonic Wars. The Napoleonic Code influenced developing countries outside Europe attempting to modernize and defeudalize their countries through legal reforms, though in Latin America the Spanish and Portuguese had established their own versions of the civil code and the Middle East.