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Notes -
Louisiana's legal system is really weird by US standards, being (AFAIK) the only civil law jurisdiction in country. I imagine at least part of the reason you get the impression you do from it is due to it having different failure modes than common law systems, making those failures stand out more.
You should also consider why it has that Code rather than Common Law system, because Louisiana was a fully formed, settled, and important French colony before its addition to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. While other states had prior European colonization before being added to the Anglo-American sphere, Louisiana is near unique in having a pre-existing French Creole social elite prior to colonization that survived accession to the USA; where Californian Spanish/Mestizos did not.
Engaging in Dissident Rightist's favorite game of Noticing, while decades of immigration and migration have slowly eroded the prominence of the old Francophone Creole elite and Cajun underclass, when you find corruption in Louisiana {and Mississippi} you'll find French names. There's a history of an insular local elite minority, that intermarries and excludes, dating back to Jefferson. Roman Catholicism, the French language, and devotion to preserving their culture. Combined with the legacy of slavery, which produced an unassimilated Black underclass, you had a legacy of a local insular Arcadian/Cajun white underclass which tried to preserve its local traditions, and a local insular Creole elite that tries to preserve its privileges. Even in a functioning democracy, if the locals all choose voting for other locals from "old families" and hiring for official positions from local old families with Creole connections, you have a spider's web of connections and corruption that it is difficult for immigrants to penetrate without acquiescing.
It’s worth noting that Quebec is also notorious for corruption within Canada.
While France doesn’t seem notably corrupt by European standards, European standards include places like Italy even if we limit it to Western Europe, and I wonder if France is significantly more corrupt than the UK.
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