code

[kohd]

code, in communications, set of symbols and rules for their manipulation by which the symbols can be made to carry information. By this extended definition all written and spoken languages are codes. While these are sufficient and actually quite efficient in transmission of information, they are at times ambiguous and are highly inefficient for telecommunications. For example, a circuit capable of carrying a voice message, e.g., a telephone circuit, could carry several times as much information if that information were represented as telegraphic code.

Generally speaking, information theory shows that for any particular application there is an optimum code; it does not, unfortunately, tell how to devise the code. Morse code, consisting of a series of dots and dashes, or marks and spaces, is commonly used in telegraphy. In a computer, information is digitally encoded as strings of binary digits or bits. ASCII, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, and Unicode are two ways representing alphanumeric characters in a binary form.

Special error-detecting codes are used extensively in digital systems to ensure the successful transfer of data. One method uses an extra bit, called a parity-check bit; if each bit is considered as a 1 or 0 (depending on whether or not it is set), the sum of a fixed number of bits can be made even (or odd) by properly setting the parity bit to a one or zero. Errors are detected on the receiving end simply by checking whether each received word is even (or odd). Audio data on a compact disc is digitally encoded and a special error correcting code is used to detect and correct errors that may have been introduced through manufacturing error or are created during the reading or playing process.

Certain arbitrary codes are used to ensure secrecy of communication; merely the message, without the rules by which the symbols are associated, will not provide an eavesdropper with an understandable version of it. See cryptography; signaling.

See P. Lunde, ed., The Book of Codes (2009).

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Licensed from Columbia University Press

code

code, in law, in its widest sense any body of legal rules expressed in fixed and authoritative written form. A statute thus may be termed a code. Codes contrast with customary law (including common law), which is susceptible of various nonbinding formulations, as in the legal opinions of judges. The earliest codes (e.g., the Roman Twelve Tables) met the popular demand that oral regulations be written down so that legal chicanery might be prevented. In later Roman law, however, the term code acquired its modern meaning of a precisely formulated statement of the principles underlying some branch of law (e.g., contracts) or an entire legal system. One of the greatest codes was the Roman Corpus Juris Civilis. In Europe, in the late 18th cent., after the general adoption of civil law by the continental countries, jurists asserted that similar codes were needed, and the parent modern European codification, the Code Napoléon, appeared (1804) and was followed by many others. The civil law code is an attempt to determine in advance what legal exigencies will arise and to furnish the means for meeting them. Basic legal principles (e.g., that contracts express the will of the parties) are worked out in systematic detail and great attention is given to consistency. The movement for codification, however, has been largely unsuccessful in countries where common law prevails, such as the United States, despite the argument that the principles of common law are sometimes uncertain and often contradict one another. Advocates of the common law assert that civil law makes possibly futile attempts to predict and control the course of developments. In the United States the term code is sometimes also applied to the statutes of a state or of the federal government that have been edited to eliminate duplication and inconsistencies and arranged under appropriate headings.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright © 2004.
Licensed from Columbia University Press

law code

Systematic compilation of law or legal principles. The oldest extant fragments of a law code are tablets from the ancient city of Ebla dating to circa 2400 BC. The best-known ancient code is that of Hammurabi. Roman legal records began in the 5th century BC, though the first formal codification, ordered by Justinian I, was not undertaken until the 6th century AD. In the Middle Ages and into the modern era, only local or provincial compilations were attempted. The first major national code was the Napoleonic Code, followed by the German, Swiss, and Japanese codes. In common-law countries such as England and the U.S., law codes have traditionally been less important than the record of judicial decisions, though major codifications were completed in the U.S. in the 20th century (e.g., the U.S. Code, the Uniform Commercial Code). Seealso civil law; German Civil Code.

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