Almost immediately upon his arrival in Louisiana, where the legal system had previously been based on Roman, French and Spanish law, and where trial by jury and other peculiarities of English common law were now first introduced, he was appointed by the legislature to prepare a provisional code of judicial procedure, which (in the form of an act passed in April 1805) was continued in force from 1805 to 1825. In 1807, after conducting a successful suit on behalf of a client's title to a part of the batture or alluvial land near New Orleans, Livingston attempted to improve part of this land (which he had received as his fee) in the Batture, Ste Marie. Great popular excitement was aroused against him; his workmen were mobbed; and Governor Claiborne, when appealed to for protection, referred the question to the Federal government. Livingston's case was damaged by President Jefferson, who believed that Livingston had favoured Burr in the presidential election of 1800, and that he had afterwards been a party to Burr's schemes. Jefferson made it impossible for Livingston to secure his title, and in 1812 published a pamphlet "for the use of counsel" in the case against Livingston, to which Livingston published a crushing reply. Livingston's final victory in the courts brought him little financial profit because of the heavy expenses of the litigation. During the war with England from 1812 to 1815 Livingston was active in rousing the mixed population of New Orleans to resistance. He used his influence to secure amnesty for Lafitte and his followers upon their offer to fight for the city, and in 1814-1815 acted as adviser and volunteer aide-de-camp to General Jackson, who was his personal friend. In 1821, by appointment of the legislature, of which he had become a member in the preceding year, Livingston began the preparation of a new code of criminal law and procedure, afterwards known in Europe and America as the "Livingston Code." It was prepared in both French and English, as was required by the necessities of practice in Louisiana, and actually consisted of four codes--crimes and punishments, procedure, evidence in criminal cases, reform and prison discipline. Though substantially completed in 1824, when it was accidentally burned, and again in 1826, it was not printed entire until 1833. It was never adopted by the state. It was at once reprinted in England, France and Germany, attracting wide praise by its remarkable simplicity and vigour, and especially by reason of its philanthropic provisions in the code of reform and prison discipline, which noticeably influenced the penal legislation of various countries. In referring to this code, Sir Henry Maine spoke of Livingston as "the first legal genius of modern times" (_Cambridge Essays, 1856_, p. 17). The spirit of Livingston's code was remedial rather than vindictive; it provided for the abolition of capital punishment and the making of