Review by Albert Tate, Jr.
In 1967 civil law and Louisiana legal literature was enriched by the publication of Professor A.N. Yiannopoulos' treatise on the Louisiana law of property. This brilliant study of Louisiana legislation and jurisprudential interpretations concerning things, real rights, and real actions furnished a comprehensive, authoritative, and perceptive exposition of the principles and applications of Louisiana property law; so much so, that "Yiannopoulos on Property" immediately became the starting point (and often the ending one, too) whenever the Louisiana legal profession and judiciary became concerned with an issue of property law.
Yet the work went beyond exposition and analysis in its critique and comparative evaluation, in light of civilian doctrine, of the Louisiana Civil Code concepts. As contained in the 1870 version of the Code, which was mostly based on text of the 1808 and 1825 codifications, some of the concepts had become anachronistic. Over the decades, some also had become distorted by judicial improvisation, either to fit new social conditions or through lack of insight as to their functional purpose. As a result, current interpretation sometimes produced doctrinally incoherent or functionally non-utile principles for the decision of issues arising from the evolving needs of a changing Louisiana social scene.
In a real sense, the work was a projet for the revision of the Louisiana Civil Code articles of Book II pertaining to the law of things, which was achieved through a series of comprehensive legislative enactments from 1976 through 1980. The basis of the revision was legislation recommended by the Louisiana State Law Institute after ten years of preparatory study, accomplished mainly under the commanding leadership of Professor Yiannopoulos as Reporter of the work for the Institute.
Indeed, the success of the first edition of this work is largely the occasion for the second edition, presently reviewed. The first edition in many instances influenced jurisprudential clarifications and modifications in cases critically assayed by the initial text. More fundamentally, the substanial revision of the Code articles in Book II, largely due to Professor Yiannopoulos' work as Reporter and to his evaluation in the first edition, made imperative a revision of this treatise, so heavily relied upon by the Louisiana legal profession and judiciary. The second edition not only incorporates in its exposition of Louisiana property law these recent legislative changes, but it also explains the prior legislation and the reasons for the new text, both conceptual and functional--a role Professor Yiannopoulos is peculiarly fitted to perform as the jurisconsult who proposed and drafted much of the present Code's property provisions.
About the Author
Albert Tate, Jr. Circuit Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Citation
55 Tul. L. Rev. 286 (1980)