HIST-1106EL Study Guide - Quiz Guide: Corpus Juris Civilis, Uniform Act, Edward Gibbon
8 Nov 2020
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The 18th century was also the age we call the enlightenment . In this period, the belief in the malleability of society was a widespread conviction. One of the features of such a society had to be the presence of a written law, understandable to all, and thus with a logical structure: a code. Much more than merely committing the existing law to writing, codification was seen by the enlightened thinkers as a means of adjusting the law to meet contemporary needs. To bring about such a code, jurists turned to their rulers, and their pleas fell on sympathetic ears because codification also offered benefits to the 18th century rulers. To them, codification, the application of a uniform law to the whole of their territories, offered a means of further unifying and centralising their territories and their power. Codification formed a means of repairing the fragmented field of law (consider the local customary laws) once and for all.
