Louisiana Law(s)

In Louisiana, the only civil-law state in the United States (which is otherwise bound by common law), the civil code of 1825 (revised in 1870 and still in force) is closely connected with the Napoleonic Code.

Law in the state of Louisiana is based on a more diverse set of sources than the laws of the other 49 states of the United States. Private law—that is, substantive law between private sector parties, principally contracts and torts—has a civil law character, based on French and Spanish codes and ultimately Roman law, with some common law influences. Louisiana's criminal law largely rests on American common law. Louisiana's administrative law is generally similar to the administrative law of the U.S. federal government and other U.S. states. Louisiana's procedural law is generally in line with that of other U.S. states, which in turn is generally based on the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Napoleonic Code

Napoleonic Code, French Code Napoléon, French civil code enacted on March 21, 1804, and still extant, with revisions. It was the main influence on the 19th-century civil codes of most countries of continental Europe and Latin America.

More than two centuries after its promulgation, the Napoleonic Code is still living law in a great part of the world. History has thus partly justified the melancholic words uttered by Napoleon in exile: “My real glory is not the forty battles I won, for Waterloo’s defeat will destroy the memory of as many victories.…What nothing will destroy, what will live forever, is my Civil Code.”

List of parishes in Louisiana

The U.S. state of Louisiana is divided into 64 parishes (French: paroisses, Spanish: parroquias) in the same manner that Alaska is divided into boroughs, and 48 other states are divided into counties.

Thirty-eight parishes are governed by a council called a Police Jury. The remaining 26 have various other forms of government, including: council-president, council-manager, parish commission, and consolidated parish/city.