Codification, Change, and Family Law

Project period: 2025-2026

No area of private law has undergone as much change as family law has since 1900. Can this history of transformation in the private-law aspects of family law also be characterized as a decodification?

As we look back on 125 years of the German Civil Code, what do fundamental, widely ranging changes such as these signify about codification? At its core, the question is whether changing social realities, judicially developed doctrine, and special legislation outside the Civil Code have excised the family law from the codificatory ambit of the Civil Code, Book IV. This research will show how Book IV of the German Civil Code over time became synonymous with substantive family law. The magnitude of change in Book IV relative to other parts of the Civil Code since 1900 is seen to confirm rather than undermine the regulatory ambition of codification. Family law thus serves as an example of how codification and change need not be incompatible with one another.