The Custom of Paris in New France

The Custom of Paris (French: Coutume de Paris) was one of France's regional custumals of civil law. It was the law of the land in Paris and the surrounding region in the 16th-18th centuries and was applied to French overseas colonies, including New France. First written in 1507 and revised in 1580 and 1605, the Custom of Paris was a compilation and systematization of Renaissance-era customary law. Divided into 16 sections, it contained 362 articles concerning family and inheritance, property, and debt recovery. It was the main source of law in New France from the earliest settlement, but other provincial customs were sometimes invoked in the early period.

The Custom of Paris was introduced in 1627 by the Company of One Hundred Associates. Then, in 1664 under the royal charter of the French West India Company, Louis XIV made the Custom of Paris the only legitimate source of civil law throughout New France and other French colonies until 1763. In Quebec, however, it was not replaced until the entering into force of the Civil Code of Lower Canada in 1866, which incorporated English law into its existing legal framework.

The Custom first originated in 16th-century France as part of a larger project of centralization of law. French law was not unified, having instead multiple regions with distinct laws emanating from each region's unique blending of jus commune and customary law. The Custom of Paris was just one of 360 uncodified custumals in effect across the different regions of 15th-century France.

The customary law of Paris was viewed as prestigious since it was the capital, so it began to be refined between the 13th and 15th centuries as part of a project of codification of all French custumals, decreed by King Charles VII by the Ordinance of Montil-les-Tours in 1453. It was first compiled in 1510 and subsequently revised in 1580 by order of King Henry III, following a period of disuse. A symptom of the time in which it was written, the Custom's 362 articles attempted to merge feudal land tenure with the nascent town-centered commercialization of the Ancien Régime.

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