In accordance with the nature of this study, which is to be critical and practical at the same time, I shall now raise the question whether and in what respect we may improve, in view of the actual necessity for legislative innovations especially in France, the legal technic which has come to prevail with us since the adoption of the Code of 1804, followed by later French statutes as nearly as they could, but never seriously improved and often even forgotten or mutilated.

Again, in this connection, I shall disregard intentionally all matters of purely external technic, depending on the constitution and the business methods of the legislative bodies. I shall confine myself strictly to internal technic, such as is exhibited in the contents of the statutory provisions.

Moreover, I do not intend to debate the expediency of a general recasting of our civil codifications, or discuss how such a measure could best be undertaken. On this subject I shall content myself with remarking that a revision of our Civil Code as a whole, if circumstances should render it expedient, would undoubtedly imply that the arrangement of the Code Napoleon, which is not very rational, would be abandoned and a classification substituted therefor which would be more in accord with the organic nature of law. Such a classification might be made in a variety of ways, as is shown by the recent example of the Swiss Civil Code, if compared to the more didactic type of the German Code. However, I want to disregard everything which would enter into the problem only if the Code were to be revised as a whole, and to consider critically the problem of modern legislative technic under circumstances which are more likely to happen, that is, successive partial revisions of our statutory law.