structural:expansion, structural:reformatting
History

Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth century, the majority of jurisdictions in the Middle East and East Asia adopted civil law legal frameworks based on the Napoleonic, German, or Swiss model. The Napoleonic Code shapes contract law across much of the Middle East, while contract law in Japan, South Korea, and the Republic of China is rooted in the German pandectist tradition. In 1926, Turkey replaced its Ottoman-era mixture of Islamic and secular laws with a secular civil code modelled after that of Switzerland, with its contract and commercial law modelled after the Swiss Code of Obligations, which was in turn influenced by German and French legal traditions. Following the Meiji Restoration, Japan adopted a series of legal codes modelled primarily on German law, adopting its commercial code in 1899. The Japanese adaptation of German civil law was spread to the Korean Peninsula and China as a result of Japanese occupation and influence, and continues to form the basis of the legal system in South Korea and the Republic of China. In 1949, Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri and Edouard Lambert drafted the Egyptian Civil Code, modelled after the Napoleonic Code but containing provisions designed to fit Arab and Islamic society. The Egyptian Civil Code was subsequently used as a model for the majority of Arab states.