“Qu’est-ce qu’un code civil: discours préliminaire sur le projet de code civil français prononcé par Portalis” in Naissance du code civil: la raison du législateur

“Qu’est-ce qu’un code civil: discours préliminaire sur le projet de code civil français prononcé par Portalis” in Naissance du code civil: la raison du législateur

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  Dans la rédaction d’un Code civil, quelques textes bien précis sur chaque matière peuvent suffie, et que le grand art est de tout simplifier en prévoyant tout.
  
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    Tout simplifier, est une opération sur laquelle on a besoin de s’entendre.
    
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    Tout prévoir, est un but qu’il est impossible d’atteindre.
    
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  Nous n’avons doc pas cru devoir simplifier les lois, au point de laisser les citoyens sans règle et sans garantie sur leurs plus grands intérêts.
  
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  Nous nous sommes également préservés de la dangereuse ambition de vouloir tout régler et tout prévoir.
  
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  Quoi que l’on fasse, les lois positive ne sauraient jamais entièrement remplacer l’usage de la raison naturelle dans les affaires de la vie.
  

[Portalis speech about importance of codification & what they hoped to achieve.]

CLASS 2 The Civil Law Tradition (Continued) Sept. 12

Preliminary provision of the C.c.Q.

J.E.C. Brierley, “The Renewal of Quebec’s Distinct Legal Culture: The New Civil Code of Québec”

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  People, things, and the points of contract b/w them are the topics to be treated. Taken together, they make up the ‘social constitution’ that a Civil Code represents. This version is incomplete. It does not contemplate directly the person in relation to public power, the state and its emanations.
  
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  It is still as an expression of truly fundamental norms. The Civil Code contains a series of fundamental jural concepts about persons in civil society. The Code constitutes the common law (droit commun, jus commune) in Quebec – albeit a legislated rather than a judge-made common law. The working concepts of the Code, and its language, inform the rest of the law. Statutory legislation, including Quebec’s provincial Charter and, on occasion, even federal law, draw upon its provisions. The Code is a truly fundamental reference point within the legal order.
  
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  As to style of expression, the legal norm will be given expression at a level that achieves a generality or abstraction that enables it to serve over a wide series of particular instances. It is a ‘meaningful generality’ that aspires to accommodate future facts in all their infinite diversity.
  
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  The Code is enabling or permissive legislation rather than an enactment calling for obedience in all its parts.
  
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  A fundamental feature of the civilian approach to interpretation: it is through the Code that one must reach beyond it. Its interpretation is intended to be the servant of a teleological approach and the enemy of a literal, grammatical construction.
  
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  The new Civil Code of Quebec is now free-standing, and autonomous; it exists on its own, exclusively, without apparent reference to its own bijural antecedents or to its own historical or socio-political context. It is the Code of a new nation-state.
  
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  The Preliminary Provision of the new Code is not a Preamble, is full of good promise.
  
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  “General principles of law” have a double role. They are the foundational concepts of Codal rules that apply them or derogate from them; and, where the written law is silent or obscure, they justify not only the new interpretation of an existing rule, but also the discovery and application of a new rule.