Louisiana Civil Code

The code promulgated in 1825 as the revision of the 1808 Digest of the Civil Laws Now in Force in the Territory of Orleans, drafted by a commission of Louis Moreau-Lislet, Edward Livingston and Pierre Derbigny after the 1817 Louisiana Supreme Court decision Cottin v. Cottin exposed gaps in the 1808 text. The drafters followed the 1804 French Code Civil closely while keeping Spanish colonial concepts they judged worth retaining, and Article 3521 of the new Code repealed the prior Spanish, Roman and French law wholesale. Written in French with the French text held authoritative over its English translation, the Code remains, as periodically revised, the private-law foundation of the one American state whose civil law descends from the civil law tradition rather than English common law.