Codification and Law Reporting: A Revolution Through Systematisation?

Abstract

With the development of comprehensive codifications in civil law countries, since the eighteenth century, it seems easy to identify a legal revolution. However, one has to be rigorous in the distinction between consolidated laws and codified ones, the Napoleonic codification being the ideal-type of this second scheme. The French situation is also the one of a parallel development of a published and rationalized case law, which has accompanied the process of implementing the codification. For this reason, the opposition with common law countries has to be nuanced. In Great Britain and in the United States, the nineteenth century was also the time for consolidating and systematizing precedents. In common law countries, as in civil law countries, the reform of the legal profession was developed “from above” to adapt the legal field to this new configuration. In one or two generations, it was another legal revolution.