Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/157

121 NAPOLEON AND HIS CODE I2I Custom. — Then there were the Livres de Couiumes and other sources of customary law. For just as in England there was a Custom of London,^^ so in France there arose the Custom of Paris — the legal system of the capital and the surrounding country which gradually acquired a predominance ^^ over the other legal systems or "customs" of the realm. The Custom of Paris, e. g., became the form of the French law that found its way to America when France first became a colonial power, and even acquired some foothold in territory subsequently formed into states of the Union.^^ At first these customs, like similar systems elsewhere, were un- written, but "for at least two centuries before the Revolution, the French Droit Coutumier, though still conventionally opposed to the Droit Ecrit, or Roman law, had itself become written law; no- body pretended to look for it elsewhere than in Royal Ordinances, or in the Livres de Coutumes, or in the tomes of the Feudists." ^^ Thus the Custom of Paris had been reduced to writing before 1580, for the revised text of that year was used by the framers of the draft code and was especially famiUar to Tronchet and Bigot. From this customary law was largely derived the material relating to the conjugal partnership, the disabilities of married women, and certain provisions as to succession.^" Other Sources. — The decisions of the parlements were resorted to for subjects like "absence," which bore likewise upon the mar- riage portion and the conjugal partnership.^^ Rules of the canon law governing legitimation and marriage were retained ,^2 though the last named, as well as legal age and mortgages, had been the subject of revolutionary legislation.^ ^ I Blackstone's Commentaries, 75, 76; 3 Id., 334. " "The Code was drafted in Paris, in the very centre of the countries of Customs; most of the Councillors of State came from the provinces of the North; the Parlia- ment of Paris had played a preponderating part in the old law. There is therefore nothing astonishing in the predominance of the spirit of the Customs; the opposite would have been an historical anomaly." i Continental Legal History Series, 286. ^' As Michigan, Lorman v. Benson, 8 Mich. 18, 25 (i860), and Wisconsin, Cobum V. Harvey, i8 Wis. 147 (1864). " Maine, Village Communities, 7 ed., 363-64. The least use appears to have been made of the latter. 40 Am. L. Rev. 851. »i Id. ^ Id. compiled by order of the convention after 1794 and containing not only the recom-
 * " I Continental Legal History Series, 286.
 * This was partly embodied in the Bulletin des lois de la R^publique francaise