New York State Civil Code Draft

Author: David Dudley Field
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Features: This is a civil code draft that bloomed within its walls but smelled outside, encountering failure in its native New York State, yet being adopted by five U.S. jurisdictions: California, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Guam.
This is a civil code draft that failed due to the author's poor social standing.
This is a civil code draft that sparked the famous Field-Carter debate in the history of global civil code compilation.
This is a civil code draft rooted in common law culture while incorporating elements of civil law.
The New York State Civil Code Draft is a civil code draft in the English-speaking world, representing the adoption of the codification concept by people in the English-speaking region. This adoption has a long history.
It is the requiem for the New York State Civil Code Draft, at which it was finally rejected by the legislature. The New York Civil Code debate lasted four years (from 1883, when Carter published his Savigny-style debate paper to 1887, when he testified before the New York State Senate's Judicial Committee). After that, Field devoted his main academic efforts to drafting the "Outline of an International Code" (proposing the idea of drafting an "International Code" to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Manchester in September 1886). Although the New York State Civil Code Draft had died in its home state, it continued to live in other states. By 1933, it had its last spark of life in Guam.
At the end of this book, I would like to share some changes in my personal understanding of the reasons for the failure of the New York State Civil Code Draft. In my doctoral dissertation, I once believed that the unknowable epistemology held by Carter, as expressed in the following words, was the main reason for the failure of the New York Civil Code: "Science is merely the organization and classification of facts, and the actual judgment in specific cases is the fact. They can only be observed and classified after they exist, such as after a judgment is made."