Short answers, pulled from the story.
Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès (the 18th of October 1753 - the 8th of March 1824) was a French lawyer, nobleman, and statesman who served as Second Consul under Napoleon Bonaparte. He is best remembered as one of the principal authors of the Napoleonic Code, promulgated in 1804, which still forms the basis of French civil law and influenced legal systems across Europe and beyond.
Cambacérès led a commission of four lawyers that drafted the Napoleonic Code while he served as Second Consul from December 1799. The Code drew primarily from Roman law with modifications from the Coutume de Paris. Napoleon promulgated it in 1804 as Emperor, and it was later extended to Poland, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and parts of Germany.
No. The common belief that Cambacérès decriminalized homosexuality in France is incorrect. Sodomy was removed from criminal law by the National Constituent Assembly in 1791 as part of a broader removal of religiously motivated offenses. Cambacérès drafted the Code Napoléon, which was a civil law code; he had no involvement in the Penal Code of 1810, which governed sexual crimes.
Cambacérès survived by carefully avoiding firm commitment to any single political faction, making his legal expertise valuable to all parties. During the trial of Louis XVI, he voted the king guilty but recommended the penalty be postponed pending ratification, a position that later protected him from being condemned as a regicide after the monarchy was restored.
From the 2nd of June 1804 to the 7th of July 1815, Cambacérès served as Arch-Chancellor of the Empire and President of the House of Peers. In 1808, Napoleon also made him Duke of Parma, one of twenty titles created as a duché grand-fief, a hereditary honor among 2200 noble titles Napoleon created.
Cambacérès was buried with military honors at the cemetery of Père Lachaise in Paris. His estate at the time of his death in 1824 was worth around 7.3 million francs, equivalent to roughly 50 million euros in 2015 terms.