Jean Domat, or Daumat
Life
Domat was born at
Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne.
He studied the
humaniora in
Paris, where he befriended
Blaise Pascal, and later law at the University of Bourges. 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-Ferrand and was appointed a crown prosecutor there in 1655. In 1683, he retired from this office with a pension from
Louis XIV to concentrate on his scholarship.
Principal work
Together with Antoine Dadin de Hauteserre,
Antoine Favre and the
Godefroy family, Domat was one of the few later French scholars of
Roman law 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
French livre. 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 was later founded.
Domat's work was in line with earlier Humanist attempts to transform the seemingly random historical sources of law into a rational system of rules. However, as a supporter of a Cartesianism juridical order, Domat endeavoured to found all law upon ethics or religious principles, his motto being " L'homme est fait par Dieu et pour Dieu"
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.
Editions
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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.
Further reading
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A. Iglesias, "Philosophy and Law in Jean Domat" (Spanish), Ph.D. Legal history and philosophy-human rights, Thesis, 2009, U. Carlos III de Madrid.
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D. Gilles, Jean Domat's juridical thought. From Grand siècle to civil french Code, (in French), Ph. D. Law, Thesis, Aix-Marseille III, 1994.
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D. Gilles, « Les Lois civiles de Jean Domat, prémices des Codifications ? Du Code Napoléon au Code civil du Bas Canada », Revue juridique Thémis, Montréal, n. 43-1, 2009, pp. 2–49.
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.
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In the Journal des savants for 1843 are several papers on Domat by Victor Cousin, giving much information not otherwise accessible.
