Article — Gury-Ballerini, Compendium of Moral Theology (8th ed., 1884)
Article II. On Civil Law
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- Law or civil right is the collection of laws or decrees of temporal Princes, by which society is directed to the common good.
Individual nations, or political communities, have their own laws by which they are governed. But we especially distinguish a twofold law, namely: Roman or common law, and the new French law, which also is common in great part to some other governments.
I. Roman Law. - Roman Law is called common, because it had force almost everywhere up to our own times. Moreover it was always held in great honor, as refined, and as though written reason.
It is contained in the very celebrated Code, or corpus of Civil Law, published by the command of Justinian. This volume is distributed into four parts.
In the first part are the Institutes of Justinian, which, as rudiments and elements for beginners in Civil Law, are contained in four books.
In the second part are the Digest or Pandects, which are distributed into 50 books.
In the third part is the code called Repetitae praelectionis, divided into 12 books.
In the fourth part are contained 68 Authentics or Novels, which are designated in numerical order.
- II. French Law. - The new French Law has existed for only a few years; for before the times of Napoleon, France was governed in very great part by common law. The new law is contained in the code commonly called the Code Napoleon.
There are five parts of it, or particular codes: 1. the civil code; 2. the code of civil process (de procedure civile); 3. the code of commerce; 4. the code of criminal instruction; 5. the penal code. To these several other minor codes, and of lesser moment, have been added: namely the code of forests (code forestier), - the code of fields (code rural), - the municipal code (code municipal), etc. The individual matters contained in the individual codes are distributed into brief and clear articles, and are indicated by Arabic numbers, and therefore are found most easily. Moreover there are many laws which are inscribed and preserved in the tablets commonly called Bulletin des lois.