Notable

Roberts S. Summers, the McRoberts Research Professor of Law, spoke as the representative from the United States at the Free University of Brussels at a symposium Feb. 19-21 celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Napoleonic Civil Code and its influence. Participants were from more than a dozen countries. Summers is a scholar of the American Uniform Commercial Code and is co-author of a four-volume treatise on that code, which is the largest body of private law ever enacted by the U.S. state legislatures. Summers' treatise is the most-widely cited on the subject both in the courts and in scholarly literatures. At Brussels, Summers discussed the idea of codification and treated the differences between the Uniform Commercial Code and the Napoleonic code. Promulgated in Europe in 1804, the Napoleonic Code was part of a more general codification movement extending throughout Western Europe and the Americas. Summers said that the Napoleonic Code had little influence on the U.S. Uniform Commercial Code, except in the state of Louisiana.