The word code is often loosely employed to describe: (1) a set of rules of any sort, as when we speak of the moral code or of the code of honor. (2) Any compilation of legal rules, from a collection of early customs like the Salic law down to the building laws of a modern municipality.

As a modern legal term, the word code (fr. code, It. codice, Sp. codigo, Ger. Gesetzbuch) may be defined as an orderly presentation, in statutory form, of some distinct branch or fairly extensive portion of the law. On the Continent of Europe and in Latin America there are regularly in each State: (1) A civil code, setting forth the law of persons, domestic relations, property, obligations, and succession; (2) a commercial code; (3) a penal, or criminal, code; (4) a code of civil procedure; and (5) a code of criminal procedure. Systematic arrangements of other and less extensive portions of the law, resembling the English Consolidation Acts, are sometimes termed codes, but more commonly laws. For European and Latin-American civil codes, see paragraph VIII. of the sub-title History, in the article CIVIL LAW.

In Great Britain, the statutes of the realm have been revised by eliminating obsolete and repealed enactments (Revised Statutes, 1870, 1885); and statutes relating to certain subjects have been brought together in consolidation acts, of which, perhaps, the most important are the statute-law revision and civil-procedure acts of 1881 and 1883; but the only important acts in which the statutory and common-law rules relating to a given subject have been combined are: The Bills of Exchange Act (1882); the Partnership Act (1890); and the Sale-or-Goods Act (1893). In British India codification has been carried much further. Not only have the general and provincial statutes been revised, but there are codes of civil and criminal procedure (1859 and 1861, new codes 1882 and 1898), a penal code (1860), and acts nearly equivalent to codes governing contracts (1872), and transfers of property, easements, and trusts (1882). Ceylon and the Straits Settlements have adopted or adapted some of the Indian codes. Canada, New South Wales, Victoria, New Zealand, and Queensland have criminal codes.

In the United States the general or public statutes of the Federal Government, and those of a great majority of the States, are periodically revised, and these revisions are sometimes called codes. When (as is usually the case) the revision is passed by the Legislature, it replaces the original acts. The Revised Statutes are grouped according to the subjects with which they deal, and the arrangement of subjects with which they deal, and the arrangement of subjects is sometimes systematic, but more often alphabetical. Under either arrangement these compilations ordinarily contain more or less complete codes of criminal law and procedure, and sometimes codes of civil procedure. Nearly one-fourth of the States have separate codes of procedure; a small number have separate penal codes. The Revised Statutes rarely include anything approaching a complete civil code, and only four states (California, Louisiana, North Dakota, and South Dakota) have separate codes of this character; for in most of the States the substantive private law, especially the law of personal property and of contracts, is still in the main common law. In Louisiana, where the common law has never obtained, there has been a civil code since 1808; but no State has yet passed a civil code which completely supersedes the common law. The first attempt to combine common and statutory law in a civil code was made in Georgia in 1860, in connection with a general revision of the law; but this code was not meant to be a complete enactment of the common law. Iowa, Ohio, and Texas have gone further than most of the other States in enacting common-law rules, but not so far as Georgia. The nearest approach to a complete enactment of the common law is found in a civil code which was drafted in New York, but which was not adopted in that State. It was adopted in the Territory of Dakota 1865, and in California, 1872; and many of its provisions have passed into the laws of Montana, Utah, and Wyoming. This code, although frequently revised, has not completely superseded the common law. Consult Estate of Apple, 66 Cal. 432.

The question of codification, in England and in the United States, is practically a question of the advisability of transforming common law into statutory law. The conditions are different from those who have prevailed on the Continent of Europe. There the earlier modern codifications were provincial; and they were made partly to protect existing customs against the Romanizing tendencies of the courts, and partly to substitute, for the Roman laws, civil and canon laws written in the vernacular. The great codes now in force in France, Italy, and Germany were constructed to replace the earlier local provincial and State codes and to establish uniform national law. The codification movement in Switzerland has the same purpose; it proposes to substitute federal law for cantonal law. (See CIVIL LAW, History, VIII.) In England the existing common law is national, and codification by act of Parliament will simply change its form and the mode of its future development. In the United States, also, the common law is national; but inasmuch as the United States Congress cannot codify the common law for the States, codification is possible only in the form of State codes; and even if the State codes were uniform at the outset, it would be impossible to keep them uniform. Codification in the United States accordingly means the deliberate creation of a diversity of laws similar to that which has made national codification necessary in Europe. An opposite movement, toward uniformity, is represented in the United States by the Negotiable Instruments Act, drafted in 1896 by commissioners from the several States and already enacted in a considerable number of States and Territories.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bentham's works, especially his View of a Complete Code of Law (Edinburgh, 1843); Savigny, The Vocation of Our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence (1814; trans. by Hayward, London, 1831); Field, Speeches, Arguments, and Miscellaneous Papers (New York 1884-90); Carter, Proposed Codification of Our Common Law (New York, 1884); Provinces of the Written and Unwritten Law (New York, 1889); Dillon, Our Legal Chaos (New York); F.J. Stimson and Munroe Smith, "Statute and Common Law," Political Science Quarterly, vols. ii. and iii. (New York, 1888-89); libert, Legislative Methods and Forms (London, 1901).