page_title: Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès
section_title: The Napoleonic Code
hierarchical_section_title: Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès / The Napoleonic Code
caption_attribution_description: English: The Three French Consuls (Jean-Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, Napoléon Bonaparte, Charles-François Lebrun)Français&#160;: Les trois consuls de la Constitution de l'an VIII (de gauche à droite&#160;: Cambacérès, Bonaparte, Lebrun)
context_page_description: Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, duc de Parme, was a French nobleman, lawyer and statesman during the French Revolution and the First Empire. He is best remembered as one of the authors of the Napoleonic Code, which still forms the basis of French civil law and French-inspired civil law in many countries.
context_section_description: In December 1799, Cambacérès was appointed Second Consul under Bonaparte. He owed this appointment to his vast legal knowledge and his reputation as a moderate republican. His most important work during this period, and arguably during his entire political career, was the drawing up of a new Civil Law Code (later called the Napoleonic Code; France's first modern legal code). The Code was promulgated by Bonaparte (as Emperor Napoleon) in 1804. In the end, the Napoleonic Code was the work of Cambacérès and a commission of four lawyers.
  The Code was a revised form of Roman law, with some modifications drawn from the laws of the Franks still current in northern France (Coutume de Paris). The Code was later extended by Napoleon's conquests to Poland, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, western Germany and Spain, and indirectly to the Spanish colonies in Latin America. Cambacérès' work has thus been enormously influential in European and American legal history. Versions of the Code are still in force in Quebec and Louisiana.
  The Napoleonic Code dealt with Civil Law; other codes ensued for Penal Law, criminal procedure, and civil procedure.
caption: A portrait of the three Consuls, from left to right: Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles-François Lebrun.
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