Because it was complete, neither recourse to previous law nor appeal to earlier jurisprudence and its philosophical underpinnings were theoretically possible. In theory, the code would stand alone as the source of substantive private law.

It sought to replace the ius commune with a comprehensive system of law based on a text to which judges could refer in resolving disputes. The codification movement of the nineteenth century, however, went further.

Moreover, judges and jurists, the 'oracles of the law,' could interpret its principles in context and add to the law in substantive areas in which the ius commune was incomplete.Ĭodification was not a novel idea in nineteenth-century continental Europe it had been undertaken in Prussia, Italy, and Austria in the eighteenth century (though usually piecemeal) and had melded with existing law. In its defense, as the great German jurist Friedrich Karl von Savigny (1779–1861) argued, the ius commune was able to reflect the spirit of the people it was imbued with age-old custom that embodied well-ingrained legal and cultural norms. Second, its principles were often class specific, creating different rules for different social classes. In the first place, the ius commune was fashioned by jurists and judges and did not necessarily reflect the popular will. Ideologically, the ius commune did not comport well with emerging notions of equality. In the late eighteenth century, as Enlightenment ideals spread and the ancien régime began to unravel, the ius commune came under attack as being antidemocratic. In form, the ius commune was largely nonstatutory it was found largely in the cases, where judges sought out and applied this amalgam of doctrinal principles refined by academics and by jurists to the legal dispute before them. The ius commune, however, was not a static body of doctrine by the nineteenth century it was imbued with humanistic principles of the fifteenth century and natural law thinking of the late seventeenth century. The ius commune could claim its roots in the Roman law of Justinian, as interpreted and expanded by the medieval Italian glossators and commentators, and as influenced by Germanic customary law. To the extent that it comprised a body of substantive law, the legal principles that obtained were of mixed origin. Prior to the movement for the codification of Continental law in the nineteenth century, of which the Napoleonic Code is the most prominent example, Continental legal systems were based largely on a system of law known as the ius commune.

The napoleonic code