Si Domat m'était conté : the artificiality of the English garden, the natural order of the French garden

The systematization of law begun in the second half of the 16th^century by the modern legal method(usus modernus) and continued from the end of the 17th^century by the law of reason ("school of natural law"), while integrating particular rights as they developed in Modern Times, formed the doctrinal basis of territorial and national codifications from the 18th^century onwards. This development, however, is characteristic of continental (Western European) systems, and historiography and contemporary legal doctrine tend to contrast it with the development of English law. However, the contrast does not entirely correspond to traditional clichés: the Law of Reason on the European continent claimed to discover and articulate the "natural order" of law, like modern natural science in the physical order of the universe, while English common law, behind "empirical" appearances and despite its determination by historical contingencies, was justified by an "artificial reason" implemented by practical jurists. The question of the convergence or compatibility of so-called "Romanist" systems with the common law is therefore one of concordance or discordance between distinct models of rationality.