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„[C]ette grande monographie parue sous un titre trop modeste, est en réalité un traité d’histoire comparé so-
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cio-juridique de la codification, donc un ouvrage d’une actualité poussée dont les juristes occidentaux profit-
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eraient au maximum… Varga a réussi une vraie théorie de l’évolution socio-historique de la codification,
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théorie authentiquement originaire dans son ensemble.”
F[ERENC] MAJOROS O
in Revue internationale de Droit comparé32 (1980) 4, pp. 873–876
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“[A]n ambitious endeavor: to give an overview of the history of codifications within the entire framework of
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legal history made up by human events for over 2000 years… indeed it is amazing how much substance may
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be poured into so small a form.”
VERABOLGÁR L CC VV
in The American Journal of Comparative Law30 (1982) 4, pp. 698–703 A SSAABBAA AARRGGAA
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„[A]u delà de l’analyse socio-économique du concept ou de l’analyse wéberienne des processus de I
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développement de la codification, on tirera profit d’une série de remarques intéressantes et des différentes O CCOODDIIFFIICCAATTIIOONN
grilles de classement qui sont proposées en conclusion. On retiendra par exemple le passage de l’utopie
quantitative (tout couvrir) à la vision qualitative (mieux légiférer), le roˆle de la rationalisation formelle du T
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droit, la place qui tient la codification dans le controˆle étatique centralisé sur le droit.” I AASS AA SSOOCCIIOO--HHIISSTTOORRIICCAALL
DENISTALLON H
in Revue internationale de Droit comparé44 (1992) 3, pp. 740–741 -
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“[H]is aim is […] to examine all phenomena having resembled codification, or having acted as substitutes to I
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it, in an attempt to offer his reader a theoryof codification… His insistence on codification-as-form…is… to
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be understood in functional terms… Varga’s opinion that there is much historical evidence to suggest that a
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code derives its real authority from the political power that institutes it is alluring. Through the inherent
virtues of the particular form adopted for its self-assertion, suggesting such attractive values as clarity and A
logic, the political authority would then find itself amplified… But, it is a paradoxical feature of codification
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that, at the same time as it appears as an instrument serving to consolidate autocratice regimes, it purports A
to mark a democratization of the law through ensuring direct and equal access to legal information for all.
Codification does away with the monopoly of memory… Whether a European codification can (or should) ef- N
fectively be achieved is not for these pages to consider. What is clear, however, is that anyone interested in O
the future of codification, and therefore in its many pasts, will do well to read and ponder Varga’s scholarly
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and insightful contribution to the legal literature in comparative legal history.” T
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PIERRELEGRAND‘Strange Power of Words: Codification Situated’
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Tulane European & Civil Law Forum9 (1994), pp. 1–33 F
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Codification is a standard means for making the law public and
available, as well as for recording the law in written texts. It is a
tool known since the law’s early development.
The fundamental task of codification in antiquity was the exclu
sion of any doubts in the presentation of the law, for example, the
restoration by the Laws of H of the validity of ancient
AMMURABI
traditions in accordance with the prevailing interests of the ruler,
declaration of law as the common body of rules for the social game
by the Laws of Twelve Tables (at least according to T
ITUS
L ’ legend of its origin), and also as a halt of law’s previous
IVIUS
development by the Codex J . In the medieval era, codi
USTINIANUS
fication made possible the registration, recording, and uniform edit
ing of the consolidated customs, adapted and brought up to date,
prevailing in particular areas of customary law. In the modern era,
the continued recording of recognised customs, the declaration of
newly established national laws, the collection of an unambiguous
body of law designated to be applicable by the sovereign power, as
well as the activity of legal reform, often hidden and sometimes
executed under the guise of restoring old-time conditions only
ideologically postulated, have fallen within the domain of tasks for
codification.
Earlier, the mere collection of portions of the law into
q ua nti ta ti ve s umma ti ons proved to be enough for
completing the task, without any structural renewal. However, on
the European continent in the modern era, ending feudal disunity
and division became the sine qua non for survival among competing
empires and dynasties. In order to achieve this, the monarch had to
organise the state army and its state financing separate from his
own, as well as a bureaucratic institutional machinery to run them,
which could function in an impersonal way to implant a far-
reaching regulatory system. For the lucid arrangement and up-to-
date handling of such a quantity of regulations, the old methods
could not prove adequate. In other words, in the codification of
continental Europe the quantitative collecting of legal material was
replaced by their q ual i ta ti ve r es tr u ct u ri ng.
The genuine breakthrough was based on the idea of legality, the
conceptualisation of laws into a sequence of legal rights and duties,
which translated the bourgeois view of society into the language of
law, realised through complete structural reform, re-establishing
and re-positing of the whole body of law. This was accomplished
by Enlightenment’s bold demand for change, by the planning ethos
characteristic of rationalism, by the re-founding of natural law (by
this time already opposed to feudalism), and, as to its methods, by
taking the more geometrico [geometric manner] pattern from the
axiomatic idea of the exact sciences (especially mathematics and
physics). With the triumph of the idea of constructing more geo
metrico, the law became represented as a system having axiomatic
logic as its ideal, replacing the chaotic mass of rules, disorderly and
full of contradictions, built one upon the other by chance. The sys
tem was constructed as the well-ordered assembly of gener al
pr inc ip les , serving as foundation stones for the whole as
semblage, gener al rules , sp eci fi c rul es , ex
cept io ns fr o m t he r ul es , and ex cept io ns
fro m t he ex c ep ti o ns . All this was done in a code
usually consisting of two parts, namely, the gener al p ar t,
which provided the directives for the entire legislation, and a
sp ec ia l pa rt, which offered regulation calibrated for
standard situations (for example, individual contracts defined in
civil law, or the legal facts that constitute a case in criminal law).
Princely absolutism attempted to operate with casuistic precision
(the General Law of the Prussian Territory, 1791), but did not
succeed. The Civil Code with which the French revolutionary re
newal concluded (1804), then the Austrian (1811), the German
(1897), and the Swiss (1907) codes of civil law, resulted in
framing the influential bodies of the law on the European continent
that are still in force today.
Codification meant new possibilities in the presentation of the
law, as well as in its internal organisation and structure. The
germ of the claim for l ega l p os it iv is m was first for
mulated in the imperial codification of J and, later,
USTINIAN
F G : the embodiment of laws in a series of con
REDERICK THE REAT
cepts; the development of its fundamental classifications and con
ceptual system, with an emphasis on prohibiting interpretation
except before an extraordinary imperial committee; and, finally, the
reduction of law [ius] to the body of enacted laws [lex], that is,
the exclusive identification of law with the outcome of its formal
CODIFICATION
AS A SOCIO-HISTORICAL
PHENOMENON
C V
SABA ARGA
CODIFICATION
AS A SOCIO-HISTORICAL
PHENOMENON
Szent István Társulat
az Apostoli Szentszék Könyvkiadója
Budapest 2011
Translated by
SÁNDOR ESZENYI (Chapters 2–6, 8–9 & 11–12)
JUDIT PETRÁNYI (Chapters 1 & 7)
CSABA VARGA (Chapter 10 & Annex & Postscript)
Translation revised by
JEREMY PAYNE (Chapters 1–12)
MARGARET TABLER (Annex & Postscript)
Second edition
Reprint of Csaba Varga Codification as a Socio-historical Phenomenon
(Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó 1991) [viii + 391 pp.] {ISBN 963 05 6012 7}
pp. 1–352, with an Annex & Postscript
ISBN 978 963 361 911 7
© Csaba Varga, Budapest 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, or
transmitted, or translated into machine language without the written
permission of the copyright holder
Szent István Társulat
H–1053 Budapest, Veres Pálné utca 24.
Responsible publisher: Dr. Huba Rózsa
Responsible manager: Olivér Farkas
CONTENTS
Abbreviations............................................................................................................1
I. INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................13
PART ONE:
HISTORICAL MANIFESTATIONS OF THE IDEA OF CODIFICATION
II. EARLY FORMS OF CODIFICATION: ANTIQUITY.....................................27
1. Reform of Customs and their Recording in Early Antiquity..........................27
2. Compilation of Laws by Later Codes.............................................................31
3. General Features of Ancient Codification......................................................35
4. Conclusion....................................................................................................38
III. EARLY FORMS OF CODIFICATION: THE MIDDLE AGES.......................46
1. Codes of the Mediaeval Empires....................................................................46
2. Codifications of Feudal Division...................................................................51
3. Experiments in Substituting Customary Law by Statutory Law
in the Age of Centralization..........................................................................56
4. General Features of Mediaeval Codification..................................................59
5. Conclusion....................................................................................................60
IV. CODIFICATION TRENDS IN THE AGE
OF ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM..............................................................71
1. Emergence of the Concept of Codification
Qualitatively Reshaping the Law...................................................................71
2. Partial Codifications in France......................................................................73
3. Successful Codifications Unifying the Law....................................................74
a) Codification of Bureacratic Patronage in Prussia.......................................74
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b) Systematic Codification in Austria............................................................78
4. Consolidation of Law as a Substitute for Codification in Russia....................80
5. Conclusion....................................................................................................82
V. CLASSICAL TYPE OF CODIFICATION: CONTINENTAL CODES
IN THE SERVICE OF BOURGEOIS TRANSFORMATION........................91
1. Inadequacy of Codification under Enlightened Abolutism.............................91
2. The French Revolution and the Evolution
of the Classical Type of Codification.............................................................93
a) Pre-Revolutionary Roots...........................................................................93
b) Formation of the Code civil......................................................................97
3. Late Bourgeois Codes..................................................................................105
a) Codification of the Aborted Revolution in Germany...............................105
b) The Law-Unifying Code of Monopoly Capitalism in Switzerland...........110
4. The Consummation of Continental Codification........................................113
5. The Non-Recurrent Nature of Bourgeois Codification................................118
6. Conclusion..................................................................................................123
VI. ATTEMPTS AT CODIFICATION: COMMON LAW SYSTEMS...............143
1. Early English Development.........................................................................143
2. The Development of Codification in 19th-Century England........................147
3. Unifying Codification in British India.........................................................149
4. Codification and British Law Export to the Colonies...................................151
5. Primitivized Law Adaptation in the American Colonies...............................152
6. Codes as a Means of Founding a New State.................................................154
7. Special Aspects of Codification in Common Law Systems...........................158
8. Stubstitutes for Codification in Common Law Development......................161
9. Conclusion..................................................................................................165
VII. STRIVING FOR CODIFICATION:
AFRO–ASIAN SYSTEMS...............................................................................171
1. The Complexity of Afro–Asian Legal Development.....................................171
2. Codification of Islamic Law.........................................................................172
3. Codification as a Means of Substituting Tribal Costums.............................179
4. Codification in the Modernized Afro–Asian Societies..................................187
5. Conclusion..................................................................................................191
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