The Quebec Experience: Codification of Family Law and a Proposal for the Creation of a Family Court System

Louisiana Law Review Volume 44 | Number 6 Symposium: Family Law July 1984 The Quebec Experience: Codification of Family Law and a Proposal for the Creation of a Family Court System Claire L'Heureux-Dubé Repository Citation Claire L'Heureux-Dubé, The Quebec Experience: Codification of Family Law and a Proposal for the Creation of a Family Court System, 44 La. L. Rev. (1984) Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/lalrev/vol44/iss6/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Reviews and Journals at LSU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Louisiana Law Review by an authorized editor of LSU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact . THE QUEBEC EXPERIENCE: CODIFICATION OF FAMILY LAW AND A PROPOSAL FOR THE CREATION OF A FAMILY COURT SYSTEM Claire L'Heureux-Dub * L'offide de la loi est de fixer, par de grandes vues, les maximes generales du droit, d'etablir des principes feconds en consequences et non de descendre dans le detail des questions qui peuvent nditre sur chaque matier . PORTALIS** INTRODUCTION Although at different periods and under different circumstances, both the Louisiana and Quebec French civil-law codes were born from the same mother and grew up similarly in a common law environment, always striving to preserve their roots. Given that background, the Quebec experience in the codification of its civil law is of interest to Louisiana, if only out of curiosity for the fate of its only sister in North America. Except for the ten-year period of 1763 to 1773, Quebec has continuously remained subject to the laws of France as those laws existed between 1663 and 1763.2 In France, the French Revolution of 1789 was to facilitate the codification of France's civil laws. It culminated in the promulgation on March 31, 1804, of the French civil code, Le Code Copyright 1984, by Louisiana Law Review. * Justice, Quebec Court of Appeal, Canada. ** Discours preliminaire prononce le 24 Thermidor, an VIII, as cited in 0. KahnFreund, C. Levy & B. Rudden, A Source Book on French Law 75 (1st ed. 1973). 1. Baudouin, The Impact of the Common Law on the Civilian Systems of Louisiana and Quebec, in Judicial Decisions and Doctrine 1, 10 (1974); Boult, Aspects des rapports entre le droit civil et la "Common Law" dans la jurisprudence de la Cour supreme du Canada, 53 Can. B. Rev. 738 (1975). 2. Edicts creating the Conseil Souverain. 1 Edicts, Ordonnaces Royaux at 37 (Quebec 1854). Canada had been a French possession under French laws since 1663. See the edicts creating the Conseil Souverain, April 1663, under Louis XIV, conferring to such Conseil the power to "connditre de toutes les causes civiles et criminelles, pour juger souverainement et en dernier ressort selon les lois et ordonnances de notre Royaume." Canada converted to the laws of England at the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763 with the Proclamation Royale of October 7, 1763, and General Murray's Ordonnance of September 17, 1764. Ten years later, however, L'Acte de Quebec, 14 Geo. III, ch. 83 (1774), which reunited Canada under one government, was to reinstate French civil laws in Quebec while in 1791 the Constitutional Act dividing Canada into two provinces, Lower Canada and Upper Canada, restated that Lower Canada was to retain its French laws, and decreed English laws applicable to Upper Canada. See The Property and Civil Rights Act, Que. Rev. Stat. ch. 367 (1970) ("In all matters of controversy relative to property and civil rights, resort shall be had to the laws of England as they stood on the 15th day of October 1792."); see also P.B. Mignault, Le Droit Civil Canadien (Whiteford & Theoret eds. 1895). 1576 6LOUISIANA LA W REVIEW [Vol. 44 Napoleon,3 a product of Roman and customary laws, royal legislation, and new laws adopted since the Revolution. In Quebec, however, the codification of the French civil laws applicable to Quebec did not occur until some fifty years later, and it came in a very different way. THE CIVIL CODE OF LOWER CANADA: 1866 Sir Georges Etienne Cartier, then Attorney General and Prime Minister of Canada, is "credited with having conceived and carried through the project of codification," with the firm conviction that codification was necessary in order to "coordinate -the existing law, to render all of it accessible to both the English and French languages" and that the Quebec code be modeled after the Code Napoleon.' The purpose was not to elaborate a new code inspired by ancient laws and jurisprudence, but rather to collect existing laws and give them a coherent meaning, a concise form. In the words of Professor Paul Andr6 Cr6peau, the drafters of the 1866 Civil Code of Lower Canada were instructed essentially not to reform, but to reformulate the law in such a manner as to transform it from an "archaic" legal system into a "modern" legal system, following the example of France and of so many other countries of Europe and America which had already adopted their own codes. The security of a single and ordered legislative enactment was to replace the uncertainty created by a multiplicity of sources that were widely dispersed. However, the legislature specifically ordered that it was the law that was in force at that time that was to be codified, and that it was to be done along the same lines and according to the same plan as the French Civil Code. The entirety of the basic institutions of our private law as it then existed was to be regrouped into a coherent and organic whole, expressed in clear and simple terms. The aim of the codification was thus put into a context in which the determination to preserve the then existing law overrode any desire for change. As no need was felt to question traditional values, real innovations were few and far between. 3. Loi contenant la reunion des lois civiles en un seul corps de lois sous le titre Code civil des Francais (Loi du 30 Ventome, an XII, decretee le 21 mars 1804 et promulguee le 31 mars 1804). 4. Brierley, Quebec's Civil Law Codification: Viewed and Reviewed, 14 McGill L.J. 521, 530-31 (1968). For a full discussion of political as well as technical factors leading to codification, see P. Cr~peau, La renaissance du droit civil canadien; A. Morel, La codification devant l'opinion publique de l'6poque; see also P. Boucher & T. Morel, Le Droit dans la Vie familiale, Livre du Centenaire du Code civil (1) (1970). FAMILY LA W 19841 1577 The purpose was to construct a Code which, embodying the past, would serve as a defense against outside influences which threatened the integrity of the Civil Law; it would guarantee the survival of a legal system that was distinctive but exposed due to its isolation within a continent in which the Common Law held sway. Regarded, like the French Civil Code, as the embodiment of Justice and Reason, it seemed inconceivable that its principles could be shaken by the vicissitudes of life. It was believed that the Civil Code would esca (...truncated)