Code Napoléon (Codified Civil Law, 1804)

Class card for the Code civil des Français (enacted 21 March 1804; renamed Code Napoléon in 1807), the systematic codification of French civil law covering property, contract, family law, and persons — the first modern comprehensive civil code. Napoleon Bonaparte convened four jurists (Tronchet, Bigot de Préameneu, Portalis, Maleville) in 1800; the Commission produced 2,281 articles integrating Roman law, customary law of northern France, and revolutionary legal-equality principles from the Declaration of Rights of Man 1789 (predecessor machine:french-revolutionary-state-1789 → this card via successor_to_in_spirit coupling). Export via conquest (1804–1815): enacted or imposed across Belgium, Netherlands, Westphalia, the Italian peninsula (Kingdom of Italy, Naples, Spain). Export via voluntary adoption (1815–present): Belgium (retained 1815), Netherlands (1838), Italy (1865 Codice civile), Spain (1888–89 Código civil), Romania (1864), Quebec (1866 CCLC; 2011 CCQ), Louisiana (1825 Code), Egypt (1875 Mixed Courts; 1949 Civil Code drafted by al-Sanhuri), Japan (Meiji Civil Code 1898), pre-1949 China, and much of Latin America. Estimated 70+ jurisdictions with Code-derived civil law. Machine-as-class: the Napoleonic Code is the class-template for codified-civil-law- as-machine — a semiotic apparatus that standardizes legal personhood, property transfer, and contract enforceability across territorial jurisdictions. Its key innovation over prior Roman-law traditions is universal applicability to all citizens (not estate-specific rules), legibility via plain-text statutory form, and portability across conquest and voluntary adoption paths. The five Napoleonic codes together (civil 1804, procedure 1806, commerce 1807, criminal instruction 1808, penal 1810) constitute the full machine; the card anchors on the Civil Code as the load-bearing semiotic core. The Bavarian Code 1813 and successive German state codes precede the BGB 1900 — the German path is parallel development, not pure adoption (coupling kind: model_for, not adoption). Japan's Meiji Civil Code 1898 is the clearest voluntary-adoption pathway in Asia (coupling model_for → machine:meiji-japanese-state-1868). Standalone: no successor_of entries; no identity_lineage_id. The card's living descendant tradition (Code still operative in France as of 2026) is encoded via artifact_type_in_2026=live and t_active_end=null.