The Civil Code of Tonkin (Vietnamese: Bộ luật dân sự Bắc Kỳ; French: Code civil du Tonkin), officially the Civil Code to be enforced in the Southern courts of Tonkin (Vietnamese: Bộ dân luật thi hành tại các toà Nam án Bắc Kỳ; French : Code civil à l'usage des juridictions indigène du Tonkin), was the main civil code of the French protectorate of Tonkin, French Indochina and was enacted by the Bảo Đại Emperor in the year 1931 (Bảo Đại 6). It replaced the earlier Hoàng Việt luật lệ (皇越律例) based on Traditional Chinese law. The Hoàng Việt luật lệ would remain the legal code of the French protectorate of Annam until 1936 (Bảo Đại 11) when it was replaced by the Civil Code of Annam, a code nearly identical to the Civil Code of Tonkin.
History edit
Drafting edit
The Civil Code of Tonkin was drafted between August 1930 and March 1931 by a commission composed of MM. H. Morché (the first president of the Court of Appeals of Hanoi), E.-J. Guillemain (1st class administrator of Civil Services), Hoàng Trọng Phu (the Tổng đốc of Hà Đông), and Vũ Ngọc Hoành (a Tổng đốc and a member of the 2nd Chamber of the Court of Appeals of Hanoi). The draft code was submitted on 1 July 1931.