Louisiana Criminal Code of 1942: Significance of the Code

   Edward Livingston presented the legislature in 1825 with a complete criminal code, which he had worked on for several years. It was to replace the conflicting and confusing tangle of Spanish, French, English common law, and new American statutes then in effect. The legislature, however, rejected the code. It contained too many progressive ideas, such as the abolition of the death penalty and reformation of criminals. Ironically, the code was lauded in many European and Latin American countries.

   Subsequent attempts to draft a criminal code all failed. The various acts defining criminal offenses remained a disorganized mass of unrelated statutes.

   Attorneys and judges had to rely on a knowledge of existing and contradictory legislative acts, and upon private attempts at organizing and publishing the criminal law, such as the code edited by by Benjamin Wall Dart. The significance of Louisiana finally having an actual criminal code 130 years after statehood cannot be overemphasized.