The provisions of this Code, so far as they are substantially the same as existing statutes or the common law, must be construed as continuations thereof, and not as new enactments.
Cal. Civ. Code § 5
EFFECT OF THE 1872 CODES
Known as the The Civil Code
The act spans §§ 1 to 23.6 (29 sections).
Applied in 19 court decisions — leading case 5 Cal. 4th 1082 - Mirkin v. Wasserman (1993)
Most recently applied in 61 Cal. 4th 846 - Marriage of Davis (July 2015)
Enacted 1872.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.