page_title: Civil Code of Lower Canada
section_title: Innovation
hierarchical_section_title: Civil Code of Lower Canada / Innovation
caption_attribution_description: Thomas-Jean-Jacques Loranger
context_page_description: The Civil Code of Lower Canada was a set of laws that were in effect in Lower Canada in 1 August 1866 and remained in effect in Quebec until repealed and replaced by the Civil Code of Quebec on 1 January 1994. The Code replaced a mixture of French law and English law that had arisen in Lower Canada since the creation of the Province of Quebec in 1763.
context_section_description: While the 1804 French Civil Code's framework was used in drafting the CCLC, the commissioners had to adapt its provisions to conform to the legal situation in Lower Canada by:
  deleting those provisions that were "new" law and thus not in force in Lower Canada
  adding to the Code those laws particular to Lower Canada
  In addition, they proposed 217 resolutions for changes to the law, which were accepted by the Legislature with only minor modifications. As Thomas-Jean-Jacques Loranger observed in his 1873 work, Commentaire sur le Code Civil du Bas-Canada:
  Four main objects stand out in the new legislation, reflect its spirit and summarize its general design.
  The drafters of the Code have based their reforms upon four fundamental principles which are the very foundation of their work. These principles are:
  Unlimited liberty of contracting, within the bounds of morality and public order, and, as sanction, the irrevocability of contracts except in accordance with the stipulations of the original agreement; the absolute right of the owner to deal with moveable property, the conveyance of immoveable property and the perfecting of the contract by consent alone.
  The introduction of uniformity into the law by the coordination of its different branches; the application of the same principle to analogous cases, a strict deduction of principles in cases where the law is silent or contradictory, and the substitution of an absolute legislation for an arbitrary one; in other words, the substitution of a positive jurisdiction for the discretionary power of the Courts.
  The simplifying of the rules which give rise to rights created by law, and which govern the legal transmission of property in the absence of any formal disposition thereof, the forms of contracts, and the creation as well as the exercise of legal rights.
  Finally, provision for giving publicity to charges which, if concealed, might cause prejudice both to third persons and to the contracting parties.
  
  Each of the amendments which we have enumerated will be found to fall, by a natural affinity, into one of these four classes.
  There were significant reforms to the previous French law:
  mutual assent alone was now sufficient to convey title without delivery (which also was extended to cover sales and gifts)
  lesion (i.e. injury from another's failure to perform a contract) was abolished as grounds for voiding contracts between adults
  in contractual obligations, any stipulation of a fixed and certain sum to be paid as damages would no longer be liable to modification by the courts
  Unlike the 1804 French Civil Code, with its revolutionary ideals, the Civil Code of Lower Canada reflected the conservative, family-oriented values of the largely rural (and mostly francophone) society of 19th-century Quebec, as well as the economic liberalism of the burgeoning commercial and industrial (and primarily anglophone) élites concentrated in Montreal. In structure and style, the Code reflected the 1804 French Code very closely. Nevertheless, it rejected major elements of the French Code which were new law (since 1763 or 1789) and socially unacceptable to most Québécois (notably divorce), while maintaining elements of the pre-revolutionary French law (e.g. the fideicommissary substitution).
  Although most of the original draft of the code was done in French (subsequently translated into English), all of Book Fourth and most of Book Third were originally drafted in English. In order to deal with any potential conflicts between the French and English texts, Article 2615 of the Code stated:
  2615. If in any article of this code founded on the laws existing at the time of its promulgation, there be a difference between the English and French texts, that version shall prevail which is most consistent with the provisions of the existing laws on which the article is founded; and if there be any such difference in an article changing the existing laws, that version shall prevail which is most consistent with the intention of the article, and the ordinary rules of legal interpretation shall apply in determi
caption: Thomas-Jean-Jacques Loranger
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