2 Concept and Origin of Roman, French and German Law

2.1 Roman LawThe family's parent — a thousand-year legal civilization:• The periods: archaic (the Twelve Tables, 451–450 B.C.E. — the plebeians' charter of published law); the classical age (the Republic-early Empire: the praetor's edict, the jurists' golden line — Gaius's Institutes, the great responsa of Scaevola, Paul, Ulpian; law as the lawyers' craft — jus respondendi); the post-classical (Diocletian's bureaucratization); Justinian's compilation (528–534 C.E.): the Corpus Juris Civilis — the Institutes, the Digest (Pandects — the classical jurists' excerpted wisdom), the Code, the Novels — the Mediterranean's law preserved for the second life;• The concepts bequeathed: person/thing/action triad; ownership vs. possession; contract's consensual forms; delict; the actio-system; the juristic method itself;• The fall and revival: Germanic custom over the ruins; then Bologna's revival (the second life — Savigny's phrase: Roman law "twice conquered the world, once by arms, once by religion" — the second conquest was by the universities).2.2 French LawThe Code Civil's system — the revolution's law:• Pre-history: the pays de droit écrit (the Roman-law south) vs. droit coutumier (the customary north's hundreds of coutumes — the Coutume de Paris the leading one); the ordonnances' royal unification; Pothier's scholarship;• The Revolution and the Code: 1789's rights-declaration (property, contract-freedom, secular family law's first steps); Napoleon's Code Civil des Français (21 March 1804) — the "true constitution of France" — the…