This essay deals with the issue of the cultural roots of 1808 Louisiana Digest, discussing the approach followed by John Cairns in a recent survey. May the Digest be considered as a civil code in the proper meaning of the term or rather has it to be reduced to a restatement of the law which was in force previously to its enactment? Its legal qualification within the system of legal sources, far from being only a question relevant at the level of legal history, is important in order to seize at present a layer of Louisiana’s legal hybridity other than the well-known one – dating back to the early 19th century – generated by the US common law encroachment on pre-existing law rooted in the civilian legal tradition. In fact, attention will be paid to the form of legal hybridity made up of jus non scriptum and jus scriptum, which may be considered the constituents of the civilian legal tradition rooted in Louisiana. In this paper, it will be argued that textual similarities between Digest and Code Nap. must be taken with a grain of salt in order to avoid misleading descriptions of the former; attention should be paid to the peculiarities of the Louisianian receiving socio-economic context at the beginning of the “American era”. […]
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SOMMARIO: 1. Premessa. – 2. L’indagine condotta da Cairns nel 2015 nel contesto della sua produzione scientifica pregressa. – 3. Le radici culturali dell’opera del 2015. – 4. Il problema della portata del Digest del 1808 secondo Cairns: si tratta di un “vero” codice? Specifica importanza della questione nel contesto analizzato. – 5. La codificazione della schiavitù: sue ricadute sulla classificazione del Digest nel sistema delle fonti del diritto privato louisianian. – 6. Il saggio di Cairns del 2017: un revirement? – 7. Quali fonti del Digest? “Forme” e “spazi” della tradizione civilian in Louisiana. – 8. “Spazi sincronici” del diritto nella ricostruzione storiografica delle origini dell’ibridismo louisianian. – 9. Conclusioni: il Digest quale espressione d’identità culturale e quale fonte di diritto privato “generale”.
