Jean Domat, or Daumat (30 November 162514 March 1696) was a French

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyzes and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal education in law (a law degree) and often a Lawyer, legal prac ...

Life

Domat was born at Clermont in

Auvergne Auvergne (; ; or ) is a cultural region in central France. As of 2016 Auvergne is no longer an administrative division of France. It is generally regarded as conterminous with the land area of the historical Province of Auvergne, which was dis ...

. He studied the humaniora in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, where he befriended

Blaise Pascal Blaise Pascal (19June 162319August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic Church, Catholic writer. Pascal was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. His earliest ...

, and later law at the

University of Bourges The University of Bourges () was a university located in Bourges, France. It was founded by Louis XI in 1463 and closed during the French Revolution. Until the mid-17th century, lack of suitable legal training at home meant many Scots seeking to ...

. Domat closely sympathized with the Port-Royalists, and on Pascal's death he was entrusted with the latter's private papers. After Domat's promotion in 1645, he practised law in Clermont and was appointed a crown prosecutor there in 1655. In 1683, he retired from this office with a pension from

Louis XIV LouisXIV (Louis-Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His verified reign of 72 years and 110 days is the List of longest-reign ...

to concentrate on his scholarship.

Principal work

Together with Antoine Dadin de Hauteserre, Antoine Favre and the Godefroy brothers, Domat was one of the few later French scholars of

Roman law Roman law is the law, legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (), to the (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I. Roman law also den ...

of international significance. He is principally known from his elaborate legal digest, in three quarto volumes, under the title of ''Lois civiles dans leur ordre naturel'' (1689, with 68 later editions), an undertaking for which Louis XIV settled on him a pension of 2,000

livres Livre may refer to: Currency * French livre, one of a number of obsolete units of currency of France * Livre tournois, one particular obsolete unit of currency of France * Livre parisis, another particular obsolete unit of currency of France * F ...

. A fourth volume, ''Le droit public'', was published in 1697, a year after his death. After Hugo Doneau's more thorough but less consistent ''Commentarii iuris civilis'' (1589), the work was the first of this type of pan-European significance. It was to become one of the principal sources of the ''ancien droit'' on which the

Napoleonic Code The Napoleonic Code (), officially the Civil Code of the French (; simply referred to as ), is the French civil code established during the French Consulate in 1804 and still in force in France, although heavily and frequently amended since i ...

was later founded. Domat's work was in line with earlier

Humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humanism" ha ...

attempts to transform the seemingly random historical sources of law into a rational system of rules. However, as a supporter of a Cartesian juridical order, Domat endeavoured to found all law upon

ethical Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied e ...

or religious principles, his motto being "''L'homme est fait par Dieu et pour Dieu''" ("Man was made by God and for God"). The work was thus an attempt to establish a system of French law on the basis of moral principles, and it presented the contents of the

Corpus Juris Civilis The ''Corpus Juris'' (or ''Iuris'') ''Civilis'' ("Body of Civil Law") is the modern name for a collection of fundamental works in jurisprudence, enacted from 529 to 534 by order of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. It is also sometimes referred ...

in the form of a new system of

natural law Natural law (, ) is a Philosophy, philosophical and legal theory that posits the existence of a set of inherent laws derived from nature and universal moral principles, which are discoverable through reason. In ethics, natural law theory asserts ...

. After the work of Robert Joseph Pothier, Domat's work is regarded as the second most important influence on the

Civil Code of Lower Canada The ''Civil Code of Lower Canada'' () was a law that was in effect in Lower Canada on 1 August 1866 and remained in effect in Quebec until repealed and replaced by the Civil Code of Quebec on 1 January 1994. The Code replaced a mixture of French ...

Editions

*''Lois civiles dans leur ordre naturel'', 1689 ** ** **

Later life

Besides the ''Lois civiles'', Domat prepared, in Latin, a selection of the laws in the Digesta and the Codex Justinianeus under the title ''Legum delectus'' (Paris, 1700; Amsterdam, 1703); it was subsequently appended to the ''Lois civiles''. Domat died in Paris on 14 March 1696.

Life

Principal work

Editions

Later life

References

Further reading