Volume 1, Draft Civil Code - Digital exhibitions & collections - McGill ...

FOREWORD
XXIII
To the many who have followed the work of the Civil
Code Revision Office, the Draft Civil Code will come as
something neither entirely new nor completely familiar.
Its broad outlines have become apparent with the
publication, commencing in 1966, of the reports of the various
Committees entrusted with the revision of each of the subjectmatters
covered by the Code.
However, the unavoidable division of the task inevitably
resulted in all too great a distortion of a work requiring
cohesion and unity. But now the pieces have been brought
together, the unorganized has been put in order and the
scattered has been assembled.
I - The aims
When the legislature decided in 1955 to proceed with
the revision of the Civil Code, it confined itself to a brief
statement of the general terms of reference within which the
jurist appointed was to work. In so doing, it did not lay down
the lines along which the revision was to be carried out and the
direction the work was to take and, consequently, it did not
indicate its scope. Was it a question of simply making quick
and partial improvements where changes were most urgently
needed? The contrary view was taken, in the belief that all the
basic institutions of our civil law should undergo a collective
and systematic rethinking.
What the revision should consist of, and what we strove
for, cannot be more aptly expressed than it was by Professor
Andre Tunc when he wrote (1): "II ne s'agit pas de tout
bouleverser, mais de tout revoir; de se demander loyalement
devant ces phenomenes nouveaux et aussi devant les transformations
techniques etpsychologiques de la societe, ce qui, dans
FAncien, garde sa force et, parfois, sa vertu, et ce qui gene