Codul civil de la 1865 şi provocarea recreării originale a dreptului

Rezumat

The following pages are trying to capture the particular tension occurring in the Romanian society, at the end of 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, between the necessity to modernize the Romanian legal system and consolidate the Romanian state through legal transplants, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a natural reaction of self preservation of the Romanian intelligentsia which contested the whole process of Europeanisation, seen as a too fast, massive and unconditional assimilation of the Western European (especially French) values and legal political models. The critique of Cuza's Civil Code proves that, far from being an oasis of unconditional Francophonie and persevering imitation of the French legal system, Romania was looking assiduously for its singularity. Essentially, at stake was neither the national freedom and sovereignty, nor to get rid of a private law imposed by a foreign invader, but to be unchained from the powerful influence of a foreign legal culture and build a Romanian legal identity. At the end, this was not achieved by rejecting or abrogating the Civil Code but developing intellectual strategies aiming to highlight its Romanian identity.