Carl Stoll May 8, 2010:

Etymological note The term “reconventional demand“ is evidently bastardised French, smuggled into the Louisiana dialect of English since Louisiana, when it ceased being French and became part of the US of A in 1804 or so, retained the French civil code, which was then merely translated into English -- evidently by some arch-nincompoop, by the looks of it. Or, actually, translated most likely by a lawyer who merely codified the already existing Anglicised calques of the French legal terms, which were used by Louisiana lawyers at the time. Thus Louisiana is the only state of the US that uses the civil-law system instead of the common law. Consequently the term “reconventional demand“ is an aberration used in one small corner of the world due to an anomalous series of historical events. Perhaps the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean has a similar setup, since it also was a French colony that was annexed by Britain in the 19th century and thus was forced to decide whether to retain the civil law or adopt the common law.