Codified law is more scientific than Common Law? The Anglo-American debates of the years 1820-1835
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30972/rcd.116150Keywords:
Case Law, Inter-discursivity, Bentham, Savigny, Napoleonic CodeAbstract
In the years 1820-1835, the Anglo-American legal world was ablaze with the central question of whether the common law should be abolished and replaced by a codified system of law. During this “Codification Controversy”, the opponents debated for the first time the scientificity of the two systems. The codifiers claimed that codes were more scientific because they reduced the complexity of law to simple and clear principles and rules that could then be applied to human behavior. The common lawyers claimed that the common law was more scientific because it allowed judges, based on reason and human realities, to construct an unwritten system of principles and rules recognised and applied as binding. But one must beware of an overly simplistic reading and take this double argument as a double doctrinal opinion. In reality, the authors debate the scientificity of systems as much out of discursive strategy as argumentative objectivity. In a context of interdiscursivity and a fight to the death against their opponents, they must, at all costs, reply and convince public opinion.References
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