Legal Systems
Quebec Law
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Quebec is the only Canadian province where private law, including civil matters, operates under French-heritage civil law while public law, including criminal law, operates according to Canadian common law, making it a bijuridical legal system. This coexistence traces to the Quebec Act of 1774. The private-law civil tradition was consolidated in the Civil Code of Lower Canada of 1866 and modernized as the Civil Code of Quebec, in force since 1994, governing legal persons, property, family law, obligations and civil liability.
Facts
Origin Year1774 is the Quebec Act, marking the structural origin of the bijuridical coexistence; the modern Civil Code of Quebec dates only to 1994. Example Jurisdictions Primary Source of LawFor private law, the Civil Code of Quebec; for public and criminal law, Canadian common law, a genuinely dual primary source 2 Cross-Tradition Connections
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Why this is disputed. Quebec's civil-law heritage descends from the French civil-law tradition, though the direct textual ancestor of the Civil Code of Lower Canada is the pre-revolutionary Custom of Paris rather than the Napoleonic Code itself; the two share a common French civil-law lineage.
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