ABSTRACT
The French legal system is one of written law. It is centralized and, since the beginning of the nineteenth century, to a large extent codified. The three great codes (civil code of 1804, code of commerce of 1807 and criminal code of 1810) have been constantly revised since their enactment. The criminal code, for example, does not retain more than 5 per cent of its original provisions of 1810, all the others having been replaced by new rules. There are moreover other 'pseudo codes', like the code of social security or the code of tax law, which are in fact mere compilations of statutes enacted at different times and published in one volume in order to facilitate their use.
