règlements (regulatory decisions). Judges sided with the local parliaments (judicial bodies in France) and the landed aristocracy, undermining royal authority and legislation. Even before the French Revolution, French enlightenment thinkings like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, with a theory of natural rights, and especially Montesquieu, who advocated for a separation of powers were major influences on the law throughout Europe and the United States. The French legal system underwent great changes after the French Revolution beginning in 1789, which swept away the old regime. By 1790, the National Constituent Assembly overhauled the country’s judicial system. A criminal code would be adopted by 1791. The Civil Code (1804), the Code of Civil Procedure (1806), and the Commercial Code (1807) were adopted under Napoleon Bonaparte, reflecting Roman law, pre-revolutionary ordinances and custom, scholarly legal writings, enlightenment ideas, and Napoleon's personal vision of the law. These codes consisted of numbered articles, were written in elegant French, and were meant to be understood by the layman. In addition, they introduced many classically liberal reforms, such as abolishing remaining feudal institutions and establishing rights of personality, property and contract for all male French citizens. Private law The term civil law in France refers to private law (laws between private citizens, and should be distinguished from the group of legal systems descended from Roman Law known as civil law, as opposed to common law. The major private law codes include: The Civil Code, The Code of Civil Procedure, The Commercial Code, and The Intellectual Property Code. Civil procedure France follows an inquisitorial model, where the judge leads the proceedings and the gathering of evidence, acting in the public interest to bring out the truth of a case. This is contrasted with the adversarial model often seen in common law countries, where parties in the case play a primary role in the judicial process. In French civil cases, one party has the burden of proof, according to law, but both sides and the judge together gather and provide evidence. There is no strict standard of proof in civil cases, like the preponderance of the evidence under American law; instead, primacy is given to the judge's intime conviction, based on the principle of "free evaluation of the evidence." The court gathers a dossier of pleadings, statements of fact and evidence from the parties and makes it available to them. Proceedings focus on written evidence and written argument, with brief hearings. Witness