Originally published: New York: New York University Press, 1956. x, 438 pp. This book consists of papers delivered by participants in the conference sponsored by the New York University Institute of Comparative Law to honor the 150th anniversary of the French Civil Code, which was the largest public celebration of the event in the legal world. The papers deal with the influence of the Code upon common-law countries in their efforts to manage statute and case law and gives examples of modern attempts at restatement of the law and uniform state laws as examples of the effect of the Code's coherence and logic. The papers were given by notable legal scholars such as Benjamin Akzin, Ren Cassin, C.J. Friedrich, Arthur von Mehren, Roscoe Pound, Thibadeau Rinfret, Max Rheinstein, Angelo Piero Sereni, Jack Bernard Tate and Arthur T. Vanderbilt. At the time of these lectures Schwartz was Director of the Institute. Includes a bibliography by Julius J. Marke. Reprint of the first edition. BERNARD SCHWARTZ 1923-1997] was professor of law and director of the Institute of Comparative Law, New York University. He was the author of over fifty books, including French Administrative Law and the Common-Law World (1954, reprinted 2006), the five-volume Commentary on the Constitution of the United States (1963-1968), Constitutional Law: A Textbook (2d ed., 1979), Administrative Law: A Casebook (4th ed., 1994) and A History of the Supreme Court (1993).

Barrett, Bryant, Translator. The Code Napoleon, Verbally Translated From the French: To Which is Prefixed an Introductory Discourse, Containing a Succinct Account of the Civil Regulations, Comprised in the Jewish Law, the Ordinances of Menu, the Ta Tsing Leu Lee, the Zend Avesta, the Laws of Solon, the Twelve Tables of Rome, the Laws of the Barbarians, the Assises of Jerusalem, and the Koran. London: W. Reed, 1811. Two volumes. cccxciii, 575 pp. Reprinted 2004 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 2003044238. ISBN 1-58477-381-2. Cloth. $160. * Reprint of the first English edition. Bryant Barrett was an English attorney and member of Gray's Inn. His superb translation is noteworthy in part because it was published the year the Code was enacted. As such, it has the advantage of being in a style of English that is an idiomatic contemporary to the original French. Many scholars believe that this is the finest translation of the Code. Indeed, they have found it to be more accurate than the official Louisiana edition. Barrett's index, which follows the style of English lawyer's common-place books and abridgments, is a thorough guide to the Code. The philological basis of his 393-page introduction had a profound influence on the subsequent development of Classical British legal ethnography.

This book charts the formation of the French Civil Code, examining both its public and private effects. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, French private law was very different in the various parts of the country. In northern and central France, there were as many as sixty-five general customs in force, as well as over three hundred local customs, often differing from them in detail. As the feeling of nationhood grew, so did the idea of replacing the existing variety of laws by a single private law, possibly a code, common to all of France. 'A single body of law, called the Code Civil is to be created' proclaimed the Law of 21 March 1804, which was created by the amalgamation of thirty-six texts. The French Civil Code analyzes the Code using contemporary and modern sources, including the beautiful and concise extract from H.A.L. Fisher's History of Europe which gives an English historian's appraisal of Napoleon's contribution to the Code Civil. This text will appeal to all students of and those with an interest in international law.

The contributions of Understanding the Sources of Early Modern and Modern Commercial Law: Courts, Statutes, Contracts, and Legal Scholarship show the wealth of sources which historians of commercial law use to approach their subject. Depending on the subject, historical research on mercantile law must be ready to open up to different approaches and sources in a truly imaginative and interdisciplinary way. This, more than many other branches of law, has always been largely non-state law. Normative, ‘official’, sources are important in commercial law as well, but other sources are often needed to complement them. The articles of the volume present an excellent assemblage of those sources. Anja Amend-Traut, Albrecht Cordes, Serge Dauchy, Dave De ruysscher, Olivier Descamps, Ricardo Galliano Court, Eberhard Isenmann, Mia Korpiola, Peter Oestmann, Heikki Pihlajamäki, Edouard Richard, Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, Guido Rossi, Bram Van Hofstraeten, Boudewijn Sirks, Alain Wijffels, and Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz.

What view of man did the French Revolutionaries hold? Anyone who purports to be interested in the "Rights of Man" could be expected to see this question as crucial and yet, surprisingly, it is rarely raised. Through his work as a legal historian, Xavier Martin came to realize that there is no unified view of man and that, alongside the "official" revolutionary discourse, very divergent views can be traced in a variety of sources from the Enlightenment to the Napoleonic Code. Michelet's phrases, "Know men in order to act upon them" sums up the problem that Martin's study constantly seeks to elucidate and illustrate: it reveals the prevailing tendency to see men as passive, giving legislators and medical people alike free rein to manipulate them at will. His analysis impels the reader to revaluate the Enlightenment concept of humanism. By drawing on a variety of sources, the author shows how the anthropology of Enlightenment and revolutionary France often conflicts with concurrent discourses.