Abstract
Abstract This chapter explores the consequences of the structural gap created by the absence of a category corresponding to casus (or strict liability) in Pothier's scheme, meaning that all liability within the Civil Code is structurally supposed to be based on fault (faute). One principal consequence of this flaw is that it has pressured the meaning of ‘faute’ away from its historical sense of culpa and towards something akin to a breach of duty, which would be wide enough to encompass many instances of unblameworthy conduct. Before this, the chapter examines the remapping of the French law of civil wrongs which occurred in post-1804 legal scholarship, from the Code's twofold division into délits and quasi-délits to a new threefold structure, namely liability for one's own act, for the act of another and for the deeds of things. This change in structure has been instrumental in concealing a number of taxonomically unsound evolutions in the modern French law of wrongs.
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