| California law |
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| Constitution |
| Codes |
| Note: There are 29 California codes. |
| Courts of record |
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The California Codes are 29 legal codes enacted by the California State Legislature, which together form the general statutory law of California. The official Codes are maintained by the California Office of Legislative Counsel for the Legislature. The Legislative Counsel also publishes the official text of the Codes publicly at leginfo.legislature.ca.gov.
The 29 California Codes currently in effect are as follows:
| Name of code | Date of adoption | Original source |
|---|---|---|
| Business and Professions Code | June 15, 1937 | Stats. 1937, Ch. 399, pp. 1229–1326 |
| Civil Code | March 21, 1872 | (Haymond 1872, vol. 1 and vol. 2) |
| Code of Civil Procedure | March 11, 1872 | (Haymond 1872, vol. 1 and vol. 2) |
| Commercial Code | June 8, 1963 | Stats. 1963, Ch. 819, pp. 1849–2015 |
| Corporations Code | July 1, 1947 | Stats. 1947, Ch. 1038, pp. 2309–2441 |
| Education Code | April 7, 1943 | Stats. 1943, Ch. 71, pp. 310–792 |
| Elections Code | February 2, 1939 | Stats. 1939, Ch. 26, pp. 49–318 |
| Evidence Code | May 18, 1965 | Stats. 1965, Ch. 299, pp. 1297–1370 |
| Family Code | July 13, 1992 | Stats. 1992, Ch. 162, pp. 463–722 |
| Financial Code | May 15, 1951 | Stats. 1951, Ch. 364, pp. 829–1158 |
| Fish and Game Code | May 21, 1957 | Stats. 1957, Ch. 456, pp. 1308–1499 |
| Food and Agricultural Code | March 15, 1967 | Stats. 1967, Ch. 15, pp. 44–825 |
| Government Code | April 13, 1943 | Stats. 1943, Ch. 134, pp. 896–1032 |
| Harbors and Navigation Code | May 25, 1937 | Stats. 1937, Ch. 368, pp. 792–1004 |
| Health and Safety Code | April 7, 1939 | Stats. 1939, Ch. 60, pp. 482–1003 |
| Insurance Code | May 7, 1935 | Stats. 1935, Ch. 145, pp. 496–780 |
| Labor Code | April 24, 1937 | Stats. 1937, Ch. 90, pp. 185–329 |
| Military and Veterans Code | July 5, 1935 | Stats. 1935, Ch. 389, pp. 1338–1418 |
| Penal Code | February 14, 1872 | (Haymond 1874) |
| Probate Code | May 11, 1931 | Stats. 1931, Ch. 281, pp. 587–687 |
| Public Contract Code | September 21, 1981 | Stats. 1981, Ch. 306, pp. 1434–1447 |
| Public Resources Code | April 26, 1939 | Stats. 1939, Ch. 93, pp. 1067–1216 |
| Public Utilities Code | May 31, 1951 | Stats. 1951, Ch. 764, pp. 2025–2258 |
| Revenue and Taxation Code | May 16, 1939 | Stats. 1939, Ch. 154, pp. 1274–1377 |
| Streets and Highways Code | March 27, 1935 | Stats. 1935, Ch. 29, pp. 248–353 |
| Unemployment Insurance Code | April 21, 1953 | Stats. 1953, Ch. 308, pp. 1457–1553 |
| Vehicle Code | September 15, 1935 | Stats. 1935, Ch. 27, pp. 93–247 |
| Water Code | May 13, 1943 | Stats. 1943, Ch. 368, pp. 1604–1896 |
| Welfare and Institutions Code | May 25, 1937 | Stats. 1937, Ch. 369, pp. 1005–1183 |
The following codes have been repealed:
| Name of code | Date of adoption | Original source | Replaced by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agricultural Code | February 7, 1933 | Stats. 1933, Ch. 25, pp. 60–298 | Food and Agricultural Code |
| Banking Code | June 24, 1949 | Stats. 1949, Ch. 755, pp. 1376–1488 | Financial Code |
| Political Code | March 12, 1872 | (Haymond 1872, vol. 1 and vol. 2) | Government Code |
| School Code | March 28, 1929 | Stats. 1929, Ch. 23, p. 45 | Education Code |
The California Codes have been influential in a number of other U.S. jurisdictions, especially Puerto Rico. For example, on March 1, 1901, Puerto Rico enacted a Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure which were modeled after the California Penal Code, [1] [2] and on March 10, 1904, it enacted a Code of Civil Procedure modeled after the California Code of Civil Procedure. [3] Thus, California case law interpreting those codes was treated as persuasive authority in Puerto Rico. [4]
In 1941, the Puerto Rican Legislative Assembly joined the nationwide movement towards transferring civil procedure and evidentiary law into a system of rules promulgated by the courts, then abolished the judicial power to promulgate rules in 1946, then reinstated it in 1952 (subject to the right of the legislature to amend court rules before they went into effect). [3] Eventually, after much of its content was superseded by the Rules of Civil Procedure and the Rules of Evidence, most of the Code of Civil Procedure of Puerto Rico was rendered obsolete and was therefore repealed. [3] However, although the Penal Code of Puerto Rico underwent extensive recodification and renumbering in 1974, [2] many of its sections still bear a strong resemblance to their California relatives. [5]
The Code of Guam, implemented in 1933 by Governor George A. Alexander, was modeled after the California Codes. [6] Thus, Guam courts look to California case law to assist them with interpretation of the Code of Guam. [7]
In 1868, the California Legislature authorized the first of many ad hoc Code Commissions to begin the process of codifying California law. Each Code Commission was a one- or two-year temporary agency which either closed at the end of the authorized period or was reauthorized and rolled over into the next period; thus, in some years there was no Code Commission. [8] The first four codes enacted in 1872 were the Civil Code, the Code of Civil Procedure, the Penal Code, and the Political Code. [9] [10] Statutes that did not fit these categories were simply left uncodified in the California Statutes.
The four original California Codes were not drafted from scratch, but were mostly adapted by the Code Commission from codes prepared for the state of New York by the great law reformer David Dudley Field II. [10] [11] As a result of the Gold Rush, many New York lawyers had migrated to California, including Field's brother, Stephen Johnson Field, who would ultimately serve as California's fifth Chief Justice before being appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The strong New York influence on early California law started with the California Practice Act of 1851 (drafted with the help of Stephen Field), which was directly based upon the New York Code of Civil Procedure of 1850 (the Field Code). In turn, it was the California Practice Act that served as the foundation of the California Code of Civil Procedure. New York never enacted Field's proposed civil or political codes, and belatedly enacted his proposed penal and criminal procedure codes only after California, but they were the basis of the codes enacted by California in 1872. [11]
As noted above, the initial four codes were not fully comprehensive. As a result, California statutory law became disorganized as uncodified statutes continued to pile up in the California Statutes. After many years of on-and-off Code Commissions, the California Code Commission was finally established as a permanent government agency in 1929. In its first report, the Commission stated: "The California statutory law is in a deplorable condition ... law writers and publishers unite in considering it the worst statutory law in the country." [12] To staff the new permanent incarnation of the Code Commission, the state Legislature simply appointed the Legislative Counsel as the secretary of the Commission. [8] Thus, as a practical matter, most of the real work was performed by the Legislative Counsel's deputies and then approved by the Code Commissioners. [13]
The Commission spent the next 24 years analyzing the massive body of uncodified law in the California Statutes and drafting almost all the other codes. By 1953, when the Code Commission completed its assigned task and issued its final report on September 1 of that year, 25 Codes were then in existence. [10] That year, the Legislature replaced the Code Commission with the California Law Revision Commission. [8] [10] Since then, the CLRC has been tasked with regularly reviewing the Codes and proposing various amendments to the Legislature. [10] Most of these are simple maintenance amendments to ensure that statutory cross-references are properly updated to add new laws or omit laws which no longer exist.
The newest code is the Family Code, which was split off from the Civil Code in 1994. Although there is a Code of Civil Procedure, there is no Code of Criminal Procedure. [1] Instead, criminal procedure in California is codified in Part 2 of the Penal Code, while Part 1 is devoted to substantive criminal law.
The Codes contain, or are supposed to only contain general statutory law, with the emphasis on the word "general". [10] The Legislature also regularly enacts a variety of other resolutions which are not laws of general application, such as annual budget bills, appropriation bills for specific periods of time, acts authorizing the purchase or disposition of land by the state government, and acts authorizing the issuance of bonds which terminate automatically upon repayment of the bonds. [10] The Legislature also regularly approves resolutions honoring the accomplishments of various distinguished persons. Because of their limited application, all such matters are not incorporated into the Codes.
The Codes form an important part of California law. However, they must be read in combination with the federal and state constitutions, federal and state case law, and the California Code of Regulations, in order to understand how they are actually interpreted and enforced in court. The Civil Code is particularly difficult to understand since the Supreme Court of California has treated parts of the Code as a mere restatement of the common law. For example, in Li v. Yellow Cab Co., the Supreme Court acknowledged the Legislature's original intent in enacting Civil Code section 1714 [14] to codify a contributory negligence scheme subject to the last clear chance doctrine, then held the Legislature had not intended to freeze the common law in place and proceeded to judicially adopt comparative negligence. In contrast, other codes, such as the Probate Code and the Evidence Code, are considered to have fully displaced the common law, meaning that cases interpreting their provisions always try to give effect whenever possible to the Legislature's intent.
As noted above, the Legislative Counsel maintains an online website with the official text of the Codes. [10] The original four codes were printed as separate state documents in 1872 (but not as part of the California Statutes), and were also published by commercial publishers in various versions, including as a set in 1872. [10] In lieu of an official set, unofficial annotated codes are widely available from private publishers. [10] West publishes West's Annotated California Codes and LexisNexis publishes Deering's California Codes Annotated. [10] Although Deering's is much older, [10] West is the more popular of the two annotated codes. Libraries that lack sufficient shelf space to carry both codes—usually because they are small law libraries, public libraries serving the general public (as distinguished from public law libraries), or out-of-state libraries—usually carry only West and omit Deering's.
There are also a handful of relatively minor statutes which were never codified and are not included in the Legislative Counsel's online copy, but probably should have been codified as they are laws of general application. [10] For example, certain initiative acts could not be codified by an act of the Legislature because they were originally enacted by popular vote of the electorate. [10] The final Code Commission report of September 1, 1953 recommended that such statutes should be published in an appendix to whichever code they are most relevant and not grouped into a separate volume. [10] The unofficial annotated codes include those statutes either as appendixes to the codes in which they probably should have been codified, or within annotations to particular code sections; Deering's also prints the uncodified initiative acts in a separate volume. [10]
In the law of the United States, the Code of Laws of the United States of America is the official compilation and codification of the general and permanent federal statutes. It contains 53 titles. The main edition is published every six years by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives, and cumulative supplements are published annually. The official version of these laws appears in the United States Statutes at Large, a chronological, uncodified compilation.
In law, codification is the process of collecting and restating the law of a jurisdiction in certain areas, usually by subject, forming a legal code, i.e. a codex (book) of law.
In the United States, state law refers to the law of each separate U.S. state.
The Penal Code of California forms the basis for the application of most criminal law, criminal procedure, penal institutions, and the execution of sentences, among other things, in the American state of California. It was originally enacted in 1872 as one of the original four California Codes, and has been substantially amended and revised since then. The entirety of the Penal Code is available for free at leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codesTOCSelected.xhtml?tocCode=PEN
The Massachusetts General Laws is a codification of many of the statutes of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Commonwealth's laws are promulgated by an elected bicameral ("two-chamber") legislative body, the Massachusetts General Court. The resulting laws—both Session Laws and General Laws—together make up the statutory law of the Commonwealth.
David Dudley Field II was an American lawyer and law reformer who made major contributions to the development of American civil procedure. His greatest accomplishment was engineering the move away from common law pleading towards code pleading, which culminated in the enactment of the Field Code in 1850 by the state of New York.
California Statutes are the acts of the California State Legislature as approved according to the California Constitution and collated by the Secretary of State of California.
The law of California consists of several levels, including constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law, as well as case law. The California Codes form the general statutory law, and most state agency regulations are available in the California Code of Regulations.
The Civil Code of California is a collection of statutes for the State of California. The code is made up of statutes which govern the general obligations and rights of persons within the jurisdiction of California. It was based on a civil code originally prepared by David Dudley Field II for the state of New York. It is one of the 29 California Codes and was among the first four enacted in 1872.
The legal system of Puerto Rico is a mix of the civil law and the common law systems.
Civil procedure in the United States consists of rules that govern civil actions in the federal, state, and territorial court systems, and is distinct from the rules that govern criminal actions. Like much of American law, civil procedure is not reserved to the federal government in its Constitution. As a result, each state is free to operate its own system of civil procedure independent of her sister states and the federal court system.
In the United States, the law for murder varies by jurisdiction. In many US jurisdictions there is a hierarchy of acts, known collectively as homicide, of which first-degree murder and felony murder are the most serious, followed by second-degree murder and, in a few states, third-degree murder, followed by voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter which are not as serious, followed by reckless homicide and negligent homicide which are the least serious, and ending finally in justifiable homicide, which is not a crime. However, because there are at least 52 relevant jurisdictions, each with its own criminal code, this is a considerable simplification.
The California Code of Civil Procedure is a California code enacted by the California State Legislature in March 1872 as the general codification of the law of civil procedure in the U.S. state of California, along with the three other original Codes. It contains most California statutes that govern the filing and litigation of lawsuits in the Superior Courts of California, as well as legal notices that must be given in a variety of circumstances. It also includes statutes of limitations that control the period of time during which a lawsuit may be commenced. The Code originally governed the legal profession, but those were later moved to the Business and Professions Code.
The California Law Revision Commission (CLRC) is an independent California state agency responsible for recommending reforms of state law.
The law of Texas is derived from the Constitution of Texas and consists of several levels, including constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law, as well as case law and local laws and regulations.
The law of the U.S. state of Georgia consists of several levels, including constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law, as well as case law and local law. The Official Code of Georgia Annotated forms the general statutory law.
The law of Michigan consists of several levels, including constitutional, statutory, regulatory and case law. The Michigan Compiled Laws form the general statutory law.
The Consolidated Laws of the State of New York are the codification of the permanent laws of a general nature of New York enacted by the New York State Legislature.
In the United States, the legality of incest varies widely between jurisdictions regarding both the definition of the offense and penalties for its commission.
The Texas Penal Code is the principal criminal code of the U.S. state of Texas. It was originally enacted in 1856 and underwent substantial revision in 1973, with the passage of the Revised Penal Code, in large part based on the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code.