The Genesis of Nineteenth-Century Civil Codes in the United States

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Starting in Louisiana in the early nineteenth century, this book takes the reader on a journey through the USA and the development of their civil codes. From Georgia and New York, civil codes traveled to California and Dakota Territory; in the Great Plains, they made their way to Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota by the end of the century.
Unveiling the history of nineteenth-century civil codes in the USA, this book examines their origin stories, circulation, and usage by focusing on the social-historical context of their drafting and legal concepts.

“Rocheton's work, published four decades after Cook's book on ‘The American Codification Movement,’ contains an exhaustive and insightful analysis of nineteenth-century civil codes. It thoroughly discusses their context, how they were conceived, discussed, drafted and approved, their main foreign influences and content, and their practical operation." - Aniceto Masferrer, University of Valencia

“While there is a vast corpus of literature on codification and, more specifically, civil codes in the civil law tradition, it is much less known that six US states codified their private laws during the 19th century. This book tells the fascinating story. Spoiler alert: it’s a family affair.” - Stefan Vogenauer, Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory

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Julie Rocheton, Ph.D. (2021), Universitat de València, Master in Legal History (2013), Université Pantheon-Assas, is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Abbreviations

Codification

Introduction
  In Search of a Definition of the Civil Code

  Methodology

  Bibliography


Part 1
Introduction to Part One. Contextualizing Codification
  Nineteenth-Century Codification—Paradigm Shifts

  Civil Codes in a Global Context

  Codification in the US Context


1Not a Movement, but a Discussion The National Codification Framework
 1.1 Grasping the Common Law
 1.1.1 Common Law versus Rationalization Science

 1.1.2 Archaisms within the Common Law

 1.1.3 The Uncertainty of Common Law Rules

 1.1.4 A Common Law of Uncertain Shape


 1.2 Emancipation from Common Law
 1.2.1 Liberation from English Legacy

 1.2.2 Codification as Liberation from the Legal Profession


 1.3 Codifier Jeremy Bentham and the United States

 1.4 Concluding Remarks: Was There an American Codification Movement?


2The Development of Private Law Codification in the US States
 2.1 The Most Famous US Civil Codes: the Civil Codes of Louisiana
 2.1.1 The Survival of Civil Law in Louisiana

 2.1.2 The Evolution of the Civil Codes of Louisiana during the Nineteenth Century


 2.2 Common Law Civil Codes in Nineteenth-Century United States
 2.2.1 The States of Georgia and New York: One Year, Two Civil Codes, Two Models

 2.2.2 The Afterlives of the Civil Code of New York



Part 2
3Creating a Fertile Ground for Codification
 3.1 Official Legal Justification behind Codification

 3.2 State Institutions as Factors Influencing Codification
 3.2.1 The Impact of the Colonial Tradition

 3.2.2 The Direct Link between Codification and the Age of the State

 3.2.3 Civil Codes and Political Parties


 3.3 Population Migration Patterns and Civil Codes

 3.4 No Civil Code without a Man
 3.4.1 The Civil Codes: a Fuel for Dispute between Influential Men

 3.4.2 The Civil Codes, Legal Tools Advocated by Individual Men

 3.4.3 The Field Network


 3.5 Concluding Remarks


4Inside the US Civil Codes
 4.1 The Sources of Nineteenth-Century US Civil Codes
 4.1.1 The Civil Codes of Louisiana

 4.1.2 The Sources of a Code Like No Other, the Code of Georgia

 4.1.3 Sources of the Civil Code of New York and Its Heirs

 4.1.4 Comparative Study of the Use of Different Sources within the US Civil Codes


 4.2 The Shape of US Civil Codes
 4.2.1 Analysis of the Form of Civil Code Articles: Syntax and Type of Provisions

 4.2.2 Bilingualism and the Special Case of Louisiana

 4.2.3 The Structure of the Civil Codes: an Assertion of US Uniqueness



Part 3
5One Nation, Distinct Conceptions of Codification
 5.1 US Civil Codes: Compilation, Innovation, and Recodification

 5.2 The Circulation of the Civil Codes and the Snowball Effect

 5.3 The American Dictionaries and Codification


6The Civil Codes in Action
 6.1 The Codification Process within the States, a Legal Turn
 6.1.1 The institutional Mechanics of Codification

 6.1.2 The Code Commission and Commissioners

 6.1.3 The Submission of Codes and Their Possible Adoption


 6.2 The Peripheral Articles of the Codes
 6.2.1 The Establishment of the Interpretation of the Code

 6.2.2 The Abrogative Articles in the Civil Codes


 6.3 The Application of the US Civil Codes
 6.3.1 A Civil Code: the Main and Exclusive Source of Private Law in Louisiana

 6.3.2 The Common Law Codes as Subsidiary Sources of Law


Conclusion


Timetable

Appendix

Index

This book is aimed at scholars, students, and those who are interested in American legal history, codification, and comparative legal history in general.
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