"Enactment of the new "Louisiana Criminal Code"' marks an important transition in the criminal law of the state-a transition from a hybrid system of partially "written" and partially "unwritten" law to a. complete system of written law . . . the Institute was charged with the preparation of a "Code" in the full civilian sense of the word, and not with a mere compilation of existing statutes. Thus wherever obsolete fictions and obtuse distinctions existed in the present law, such fictions and distinctions were to be eliminated. Where past jurisprudence indicated gaps or hiatuses in existing criminal statutes, the articles of the new Code were to be drafted so as to plug up those gaps and hiatuses. Where a change was clearly necessary and practical, a century of habitual error should not preclude its adoption."
Dale E. Bennett, The Louisiana Criminal Code: A Comparison with Prior Louisiana Criminal Law, 5 La. L. Rev. (1942)
