French Civil Code, 1804
After four years of debate and planning, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte enacts a new legal framework for France, known as the “Napoleonic Code.” The civil code gave post-revolutionary France its first coherent set of laws concerning property, colonial affairs, the family, and individual rights.
In 1800, General Napoleon Bonaparte, as the new dictator of France, began the arduous task of revising France’s outdated and muddled legal system. He established a special commission, led by J.J. Cambaceres, which met more than 80 times to discuss the revolutionary legal revisions, and Napoleon presided over nearly half of these sessions. In March 1804, the Napoleonic Code was finally approved.
It codified several branches of law, including commercial and criminal law, and divided civil law into categories of property and family.
Article 1582. A sale is an agreement by which one person is bound to deliver a thing, and another to pay for it. It may be an authentic act, or under private signature.
Article 1583. It is complete between the parties, and the property is acquired in law by the purchaser with regard to the seller, as soon as the thing and the price are agreed on, though the thing have not been delivered nor the price paid.
Article 1589. The promise of sale is equivalent to a sale, where there is a mutual agreement of the two parties upon the article and the price.