Nativismand Transnationalism Spanish Lawafter the Civil Code Bartolomé Clavero 1. The Law, according to the Code The Civil Codes of the Napoleonic model are usually more than their name indicates, civil laws; they are normally headed by some rules which define the very Law, the legal system. The Spanish Code was no exception.' It appeared in 1889 with the following preliminary title: De las leyes, de sus efectos y de las reglas generales para su aplicacion (Of the Laws, their effect and the general rules for their application). It will be useful to start with several elementary explanations about the meaning of the heading. The Law, and only the Law, is dealt with; this is a concept (Ley) that means, at the same time. Act and Law, by which I mean the rule politically decided, statute law, and the whole legal system, the Law. No other concept is referred to because, in accordance with the Napoleonic model, there is no space for any Law other than the one established by the legislative power of national scope. Also according to the model, there is no specification in regard to the constitutional inspiration or the parliamentary procedure of this law that is the Law System. The normderives its validity of its publication in the official press, the national bulletin. Such a heading responds to this most simple conception of what the Law System may be, to this equation with the Law of political decision and national character. That was the concept which precedes all the codification that was also pursued here. But this was to have a different meaning in Spain to that in France; and we are concerned here with Spain. Firstly, because the conditions of each code, of each codification, are quite different. Secondly, because the Civil Code itself, its preliminary title which affects all of the legal system, ends up by saying, in its Spanish version, things that are very different from its heading’s model. Thirdly, last but by no means least, because the codification had also a very different cultural reception. Let us review all this, a series of fundamental questions that are not usually taken account of when the Spanish case is observed as one more within the general phenomenon of codification.' ' Jeronimo Lopez-Lopez y Carlos MelcSn-Infante (eds.), Codigo Civil. Version cn'tica del texto y estudio preliminär, Madrid 1967. ’ Helmut Coing, Europaisches Privatrecht, II, 1800 bis 1914, Miinchen 1989.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=