Codification (law)

A codification is the systematic summary of the legal principles of a legal field in a uniform body of law. In this, the respective area of law is to be conclusively regulated, in principle to the exclusion of other sources of law. The principle of completeness further requires a structured outline and a consistent set of terms. Classical representatives are the codifications of the German Civil Code and the Code of Civil Procedure. The term was coined by the English jurist and social reformer Jeremy Bentham.

If, on the other hand, the summary lacks an organizing system or is merely composed of quotations from other legal works, it is referred to as a "compilation". Classical representatives here are the components of the so-called corpus iuris civilis, such as the digesten. The Roman-Germanic legal system is largely characterised by codification, whereas common law only knows compilations of laws.

The purpose of codification is to make the rules applicable to the area of life in question more readily available and comprehensible by summarising them in a compact manner and relating them to each other.

The codifications that are significant today can be divided into two groups:

• Codifications of natural law (beginning of the 19th century): Code civil, ABGB (Austrian Civil Code)
• Pandectist codifications (beginning of the 20th century): BGB, ZGB

In German law, the best-known codification process was the consolidation of civil law in the Civil Code at the end of the 19th century. Currently, the - not yet completed - consolidation of large parts of social law in the Social Code is planned. For some time now, there have been calls for the codification of the scattered environmental law in an environmental code.

In Roman antiquity, the twelve-table law around 450 BC represented the first codification. It was the result of previous struggles between the estates (450-287 B.C.), in which the plebeians had fought for political co-determination, equality under civil law and a share in the economic profits of expansion. A multitude of further codices followed with the beginning of Late Antiquity under Diocletian and later Justinian. The codices they created were, however, of a compilatory nature, since they intended to preserve classical jurisprudential law; in addition, however, they also served to compile imperial laws (imperial constitutions).

In the Islamic world, the applicable law was compiled by scholars in law books very early on within the framework of Fiqh, but a codification of the law in the form of state law codes did not take place until the second half of the 19th century, with the Mecelle, which was created between 1869 and 1876 and regulated civil law, forming the beginning. In Saudi Arabia, Islamic law has not yet been codified because such a codification is considered an inadmissible state curtailment of the judge's freedom of decision, who is supposed to base his judgment solely on the Koran and the Sunna.