principles and rules in an area of law. In theory, codes should go beyond the compilation of discrete statues, and instead state the law in a coherent and comprehensive piece of legislation, sometimes introducing major reforms or starting anew. There are about 78 legal codes in France currently in force, which deal with both the French public and private law categorically. These codes are published for free by the French government on a website called Légifrance. In 1989, the French government set up the Commission Supérieure de Codification, tasked with codifying laws. The Commission has worked with ministries to introduce new codes and codify existing legislation. Unlike the transformative Civil Code under Napoleon, the goal of the modern codification project is to clarify and make more accessible statutes in by compiling one code in a particular area of law and remove contradictions. Despite this, areas very often overlap and codes necessarily cannot contain all of the law in a given field. History In the High Middle Ages, most legal situations in France were highly local, regulated by customs and practices in local communities. Historians tend to be attracted by the large regional or urban customs, rather than local judicial norms and practices. Beginning in the 12th century, Roman law emerged as a scholarly discipline, initially with professors from Bologna starting to teach the Justinian Code in southern France and in Paris. Despite this, Roman law was largely academic and disconnected from application, especially in the north. Historians traditionally mark a distinction between Pays de droit écrit in southern France and the Pays de droit coutumier in the north. In the south, it was thought that Roman law had survived, whereas in the north it had been displaced by customs after the Germanic conquest. Historians now tend to think that Roman law was more influential on the customs of southern France due to its medieval revival. By the 13th century, there would be explicit recognition of using Roman law in the south of France, justified by the understanding of a longstanding tradition of using Roman law in the custom of southern France. In the North, private and unofficial compilations of local customs in different regions began to emerge in the 13th and 14th centuries. These compilations were often drafted by judges who needed to decide cases based on unwritten customs, and the authors often incorporated Roman law, procedures from canon law,