Legal Coding

This article contains general information on coding. See also List of legal codes.

Law codification is to consolidate the normative texts of various kinds in collections on a subject. Each group becomes a code.

Forms and types of codification

The concept of "codification" in fact covers different practices in many ways, including lawyers and historians have noted the variety, both in developing as in content.

Variations in shape

It is therefore necessary to distinguish:

• official codification or consolidation itself, by which the authority (including the legislature ) has published a text which gives it the name "code", which is largely the case in France today;
• informal codification, also made by the authority which promulgates a consolidated text and unifying the provisions of the same area, but without giving them officially named "code", even though the term is commonly used, sometimes in Official texts: the codification of the old regime are those ( Code Michau , Louis Code and other royal decrees );
• codification private or unofficial grouping of texts around a field, made by lawyers and / or publishers to facilitate the work of legal practitioners and litigants. This practice began to grow in France in the eighteenth ^century with such a criminal code ( 1752 ) or even a code Corsica in 1788 , printed by the Imprimerie Royal , which gave him an unofficial status rather marked. Nowadays, the practice continues with such Code on Private International Law published by Bruylant in Belgium.

However, when used without qualification the term "codification" refers primarily to the first form, sometimes to the second: one does not hesitate to speak of the "codification of Louis XIV. "

Changes in scope

A consolidation involves a form of failure, since the code replaces all or part of earlier texts. But this break is more or less:

• Codification-collection (or coding-compilation) is not true of rupture, simply to bring together texts that remain. The codification of private is always this way. Official codification does not usually leaves untouched the earlier texts. However, in France, some codes (eg code of Commons) account of legislation for convenience, but had no legislative power and only the earlier texts, such as the 1884 law on municipal councils, were binding.
• The codification of established law is a break in the text, but not in positive law. The earlier texts are expressly repealed , but their content is included in the code, with the exception of obsolete texts (which had been repealed by implication) such that positive law remains: is the current French practice.
• Codification in the full sense of the term tends to break not only with texts but with the background. The break is never complete: even the Napoleonic codes were included significant portions of the old law. A recent example of consolidation is breaking the French Penal Code of 1994 which introduced several new features (drop minimum sentences, abolition of imprisonment for contraventions , etc..).

Some legal historians, as the Italian Mario Viora, use the word "consolidation" for the first two forms, reserving the word coding in the third.

Codification and recodification

The coding is to create a code in an area where none existed. In some cases, we can speak of recoding:

• or when completely recasts existing code with the same or a slightly different title, as in France the Commercial Code in 2000 ;
• where a new code incorporates the content of a previous code into a larger whole, such as the Code of Administrative Justice consolidate the code of administrative courts and administrative courts of appeal, but adding provisions relating to State Council ;
• or where the provisions included in a code are transferred to a code that has been promulgated, such as provisions relating to hunting and fishing, past the Rural Code in the environmental code.

Contents of a code

A code can contain normative provisions of various kinds, which are the main laws and regulations. The French official codes also contain it, but it would be possible in other legal systems, to integrate elements of case law or doctrine.

In France, some existing codes are codes of ethics. This is not a general rule that the ethical rules are included in the codification of law.

United States, there are " Federal Sentencing Guidelines "which are the basis for codes of ethics and professional charters.

The modern codification in France

French Revolution and First Empire

The French Revolution wanted to bring all laws and regulations for everyone. It has launched several projects of codification, which primarily led to the criminal law with the publication of the Code of Crimes and Punishments "in 1791. In contrast, the general project of a "Code of civil laws common to all the kingdom," said the 1791 Constitution (Preliminary title, last paragraph) is not successful before the end of the revolutionary period.

So Napoleon Bonaparte who launched a movement of massive consolidation and creates the French Civil Code in 1804, then imperial codes: Code of Civil Procedure (1806), Commercial Code (1807), Code of Criminal Procedure ( 1808) and Penal Code (1810).

The weakening of the codification of the end of the Empire to the Third Republic

Once published five codes, the movement launched by Napoleon ^I ran out of steam. A project of the Rural Code is ruled by the Emperor and is not taken by the restoration , despite the requests made, including by some members. Louis XVIII is enacted by ordinance a new version of the five imperial codes, but is only to change references to the Empire by references to the Kingdom. The mere creation of the Restoration is a forestry code established by the Act of ¹ August 1827. Under the July Monarchy , the penal code is being republished under the law of 28 April 1832 and operated by prescription, but the changes are just additions and modifications of articles, most of the remaining code.

Subsequently, the codification does appear as a concern. It was not until 1857 and 1858 respectively to see enacted the Code of Military Justice of the Army and the code of military justice of the Navy.

The Third Republic looks back to the codification and engages in the creation of the Rural Code as expected. However, the work of government offices taking the delay, the Government is resolved to push through the text several times, leading to a short series of laws designed to further train the Rural Code and the adoption of which extends from 1881 to 1890. The adoption of the Labour and Social Welfare, passed in general book by book, begun in 1910 , ends in 1927. To overcome these delays, the Government uses two methods:

• The first is to divide projects into several codes: the code instead of wheat that had been promised, have promulgated a code of the organization and defense of the wheat market and a code of the Office National Interprofessional Wheat and four tax codes are created instead of a single tax code (which will eventually be created by recompiling in 1950 );
• the other is to move to codify it by decree , after the Parliament has the approval of a law.

This does not preclude the promulgation of codes, some of which are still in force, the Maritime Labour Code and the disciplinary and criminal code of Shipping ( 1926 ).

The revival of codification in modern times

The Fourth Republic revived the codification process by creating a higher commission to study the consolidation and simplification of laws and regulations (Decree ^No. 48-800 of 10 May 1948). Forty codes are published but they are adopted by Orders in Council of State , without validation by Parliament. From the Fourth Republic, some codes have a legislative part and one or more portion (s) regulatory (s) (regulations and decrees in public administation State Council decrees simple , arrested ). At the end of the Fourth Republic , Law ^No. 58-346 of 3 April 1958 gives legal force to a regulatory parties fifteen codes and repeals the relevant laws, which is a form of delayed consolidation.

The Constitution of the Fifth Republic has laid down in Article 34, a clearer distinction between the fields of law and the regulatory domain, which has consequences in the desire to maintain a strict distinction between the two, with the establishment of systematic parliamentary parties and party regulation. This leads by example in creating parties for regulatory codes that do not involve, as the Penal Code (Decree ^No. 58-1303 of 23 December 1958 and 60-896 dated 24 August 1960 ). The practice of codification by decree continues, the codes have the force of law unless a subsequent law specifically gives them the.

To revive the codification movement, slowing down, the Government created in 1989 . These orders allow the speedy promulgation of new codes nombreaux.

Timetable for adoption of codes (legislative part unless otherwise stated):

• from 1989 to 1996: Intellectual Property Code, the Consumer Code, General Code of Territorial Code of financial jurisdictions, the Rural Code (partial)

• 2000: Education Code (June 15, 2000), Code of Public Health (June 15, 2000), Code of Commerce (September 18, 2000), the Environmental Code (September 18, 2000), Code of Administrative Justice Code Road (December 23, 2000), Code of Social Action and Families (December 23, 2000), Monetary and Financial Code (December 14, 2000), the Rural Code (June 15, 2000).

• after 2000: new codes were adopted, including the Code of Entry and Stay of Aliens and Asylum (2004), the Defence Code (2004), the code of financial jurisdictions, the code Administrative Justice, the Public Procurement Code (purely regulatory, three versions between 2001 and 2006), the code Heritage (February 20, 2004), the code search and code of tourism.

The French government has filed 13 July 2006 on the desk of the Senate a bill to simplify the law which should continue the process of codification. It provides for empowering the Government to use the ordinances to amend several existing codes and create new codes:

• code trades and crafts
• transport code (which is already subject to clearance)

Place in the Hierarchy

The codes contain either laws or the regulations , which are noted:

• in the legislation:
  • LO-nnn for organic laws ;
  • L-nnn for ordinary laws;
• in the regulatory part:
  • R-dpi for Orders in Council of State;
  • D-dpi for simple orders.

The laws of the same code can be placed in the hierarchy of norms in the block of legality. The regulations are placed below the bloc.

The codes

France

French legislation includes (end 2007) 61 codes. Without exception, the codes contain some legislative (coded L-) and a regulatory part (coded R-). For example, the Labour Code contains 2000 pages, and the tax code to include 2500. For list, see List of legal codes.

See also

References

Related articles

• Law
• Administrative Rules
• Hierarchy of standards
• Branches of law
• Comparative Law
• Legal
• Code of Ethics

External Links

• French texts consolidated in recent times (Lgifrance website)

• Law portal

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