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In 1800, General Napoleon Bonaparte, as the new dictator of France, began the arduous task of revising France’s outdated and muddled legal system.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 1602. The seller is bound to explain clearly what it is he binds himself to. Every obscure or ambiguous bargain is construed against the seller.
Article 1603. He has two principle obligations, that of delivering and that of warranting the thing which he sells.
Article 1611. The seller must, in all cases, be condemned in damages, if an injury result to the purchaser through failure in delivery at the term agreed on.
Article 1621. In all cases which the purchaser has a right to recede from the contract, the seller is bound to restore to him, beyond the price, if he have received it, the expenses of the contract.