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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In 1800, General Napoleon Bonaparte, as the new dictator of France, began the arduous task of revising France’s outdated and muddled legal system.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 73. The authentic act of the consent of fathers and mothers, or of grandfathers and grandmothers, or in defect of these, that of the family, shall contain the Christian names, the surnames, the professions, and domiciles of the future husband, or wife, and of all those who shall have concurred in the act, together with their degree of relationship.
Article 144. A man before the age of 18, and a woman before 15 complete, are incapable of contracting marriage.
Article 145. The government shall by be at liberty nevertheless, upon weighty reasons, to grant dispensations of age.
Article 148. The son who has not attained the full age of 25 years, the daughter who has not attained the full age of 21.
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