UCLA School of Law

This article explores the impact of the 1825 Louisiana Civil Code on California legislation and jurisprudence. In 1850, the California legislature rejected civil law, and the Louisiana Code specifically, as a model for the new state, and installed a common law system. However, in subsequent decades its courts and attorneys repeatedly cited Louisiana decisions on municipal land rights. During the Progressive Era, California adopted a public approach to water allocation that followed the centralized French pattern which had shaped the 1825 Code. The latter reappeared explicitly in 1975 when the California Supreme Court required comparative negligence (fault apportionment) to be applied in personal injury cases— an innovative feature of the Code which had long been abandoned in Louisiana. Ironically, the Louisiana Civil Code’s original prioritization of the general good, not always recognized in that state itself, resonated in perennially reform-minded California.