It was the only assembly of the Empire where real debate took place, and where Napoleon listened. The Civil Code was argued there article by article, in a hundred and two sessions, half of which he chaired.

Historical context

The Constitution of Year VIII created in December 1799 a Council of State charged with drafting bills and judging administrative disputes. Under the Consulate and Empire it sat in the Tuileries palace, close to the head of state's study — a proximity that says everything about its function: not a counterweight, but the government's workshop.

It gathered the best jurists of the day, former royalists and former Conventionnels mixed together: Portalis, Tronchet, Cambacérès, Roederer, Regnaud de Saint-Jean-d'Angély, Molé, Merlin de Douai. Recruitment went by competence, regardless of political past — one of the regime's clearest successes in reconciliation.

The Civil Code was discussed there article by article between 1801 and 1804, in a hundred and two sessions, more than half chaired by Napoleon. The minutes show a head of state intervening on adoption, divorce, filiation and paternal authority, sometimes brutally, often with common sense, and letting himself be contradicted by Portalis or Tronchet — something no other assembly could allow itself.

The Council survived every regime. It left the Tuileries after the fire and moved in 1875 to the Palais-Royal, where it still sits as supreme judge of the administration. Of the consular institutions it is the one that has best crossed the two centuries: the Civil Code has been rewritten, the germinal franc has gone, and the Council of State still judges.