Roman law precedents of the contract of service in the code Napoleon

Abstract

In the original text of the French civil code (Code civil des Français or Code Napoléon), a peculiar regulation of the contract of service is included. After a general provision, a threefold category is arranged: the labour contract of servants and workmen, the service contract of sea carriers, innkeepers and stablekeepers and the contract for work. Each of these sections have different origins and a particular history, in which Roman elements are mixed with others of a different provenance. The aim of this paper is to show what remains from the Roman picture of these contracts, why these very institutions were included there, and what historical and ideological factors could have had an influence on them, in order to keep the Roman regulation of these institutes in some cases, and to deform it in other, as they were very characteristic institutions of the new industrial society, which was then to emerge at that historical moment,.