The present “revolution” in biological technology is leading lawyers to fundamentally reconsider the laws of human reproduction .What is at stake is not only the transmission of life but also the transmission of a certain order of the things on which society is based. This is the reason why the law has always sought to regulate the transmission of life. Covering themes from Canon and medieval Roman Law to the 1804 ‘Code civil’, the work includes twenty-three articles on the history of law about a number of modern-day questions. They deal with the close connections long maintained between marriage and procreation; with natural and legal "filiation" especially regarding the very delicate problems of evidence; with the institution of legitimation but also of the child as a person. There is also an article on the important matter of the "conceived child".