### Louisiana Law Is A Complex Civil Law And Common Law Hybrid

In practice, Louisiana law is more of a hybrid system, than it is a true civil law state (as it is often described as being). The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 actually preceded the adoption of the French Civil Code in 1804, although the French Civil Code had profound influence on Louisiana law prior to it becoming a U.S. state in 1812, and its early years of U.S. statehood when the federal governments role in law making and providing government services was much narrower.

### I. Criminal Law

Criminal law in Louisiana is much closer to the common law adversarial system than the civil law inquisitorial system, for example, in part as a consequence of U.S. Constitutional limitations on state criminal procedure.

### II. Civil Procedure 

Civil procedure in Louisiana is a mix of the civil legal process and the common law legal process. In civil procedure, Louisiana has some civil law influences, but is a common law civil procedure biased hybrid system.

While it is not compelled by the U.S. Constitution, Louisiana has a right to jury trials in many civil law case. 

Louisiana's overall civil law system is better characterized as a whole as adversarial than inquisitorial, despite residual civil law influences.

### III. Sources Of Law

Consistent with its civil law heritage, all law in Louisiana must be rooted in statute and can't be purely dependent upon common law case law. 

But, unlike true civil law systems, precedent making case law from appellate courts regarding statutory interpretation is essentially the same in Louisiana as in other U.S. states with a common law heritage.

Its courts, unlike true civil law states, issue appellate decisions that are binding precedents in common law fashion. 

### IV. The Legal Profession

The ethical duties of lawyers in Louisiana, likewise, now fully track those of lawyers in other U.S. states. Louisiana has almost completely abandoned any trace of the occupational framework for lawyers and the ethical standards for lawyers found in civil law countries that differ from those of U.S. common law jurisdictions.

For example, Louisiana does not have the ethical rule for lawyers found in most civil law jurisdictions forbidding lawyers from representing someone in a matter in which a previous law has done work for which the previous lawyer has not be paid. Likewise, Louisiana does not have the strict regulation of lawyer contact with witnesses prior to their presentation of testimony to a court that is found in most civil law jurisdictions but is absent in U.S. common law jurisdictions. 

Similarly, notaries in Louisiana were originally closer to the civil law model but the role of notaries has eroded in the common law notary direction over time (not necessarily completely however).

#### V. Private Law

The substantive private civil law in Louisiana (i.e. the non-criminal law that can be raised in lawsuits between non-governmental parties such as contract law, tort law, property law, inheritance rights, marital property, guardianship, customary units for real property boundaries, etc.) tends to track the French Civil Code adopted a year after the Louisiana purchase (and the pre-French Civil Code law that applied during French rule), rather than English common law.

For example, [usufructs][1] exist in Louisiana law but are unknown in common law jurisdictions.

Bit by bit, distinctive Louisiana legal concepts such as the "mystic will" have been repealed or fallen into desuetude, however.

Until about the 1840s, Louisiana's laws governing slavery and interracial relationships followed the customs and practices established under French rule which were quite different from the practices of the English adopted in the colonial period in the United States. But in the decade or two before slavery was abolished in Louisiana this began to shift markedly in the direction of other southern and for a while Confederate, states in the United States and away from the French model, curtailing greatly, for example, the rights of "free people of color" in the state.

This said, however, many provisions of private law that are present in other U.S. states have been adopted wholesale in Louisiana.

For example, Louisiana has adopted the Uniform Commercial Code, the Uniform Fraudulent Transfers Act, the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act, and 
"no fault" divorce. 

Many parts of private law, such as the law of union-management relationships and arbitration are governed by federal law in a common law mold. 

Louisiana has also, in civil law fashion, statutorily codified legal concepts not present in civil law countries like trust law in order to coordinate functionally with trust law in other U.S. states.

Likewise, there are many major modern legislative developments in civil law countries generally, and French law, in particular, were not imitated by Louisiana.

For example, France has adopted innovated ways to recognize relationships short of marriage that Louisiana has not copied, such as [civil solidarity pacts][2] (PACS) and some minimal legal rights associated with cohabitation known in French as a concubine relationship status.

### VI. Public Law

Public law in Louisiana (i.e. the law governing the relationship of individuals with the government) almost entirely tracks the common law pattern and not the civil law pattern, in part, due to the influence of U.S. Constitutional law and federal statutes (e.g. 42 U.S.C. § 1983).

### Footnote On Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico became in U.S. territory in 1898 in connection with the Spanish-American War, at a time when its civil law institutions were much more developed than those of Louisiana in 1803, has remained Spanish speaking while still subject to U.S. federal law, and is not as integrated into the U.S. legal system as Louisiana and other U.S. states.

As a result, while Puerto Rico must make some concessions to the U.S. Constitution which incorporates common law legal institutions like the right to a jury trial in criminal cases, it is much closer to the European (and in particular, the Spanish) civil law legal system than Louisiana.

Also, importantly, federal courts in Louisiana operate using the common law based federal rules of procedure, criminal and civil, and apply common law based substantive federal law.

  [1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/usufruct
  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_solidarity_pact