The expressioncontrat du travail was used inCode du travail, a great compilation of labour statutes which was introduced during the period 1910-1927.The legal historical background was chronologically and thematically similar to the development in most otherWestern countries.Around the turn of the century in1900 there was a common need for legal regulation which could satisfy the demands of large-scale industry as well as protect the workers’ integrity.285 However, as in other countries, the French legislation did not explicitly regulate the specific terms of individual labour relationships.This task was instead fulfilled by the courts, in particular the justices of the French Supreme Court, Cour de Cassation. In the course of time French legal scholarship was ready to systematise the court’s decisions. As the result of this process, general principles appeared, according to which the decisive criteria, as well as the essential consequence, of the contract of employment was the principle of subordination juridique. This meant that the working party was subordinate to the paying party’s so-called jus variandi, which involved a far-reaching right to change the terms of work. The theoretical foundation of this subordination juridique has followed two lines which are partly contradictory, partly overlapping, namely the “institutional doctrine” (la théorie institutionnelle), and the “contractual doctrine” (la conception contractuelle), also called the classical individualistic doctrine.According to the institutional doctrine, several persons can together realise a joint idea by establishing an institution. These kinds of joint frameworks are to be found, for example, in the family, the state and the religious congregation but also in working life and in the business world.The individuals within the institution constitute an organised power, a community with its own social life and its own nature. For the institution, a “natural” master relationship is postulated a priori, which is based on the notion that individual p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 6 142 285 Ray 1995, pp. 68-69; Supiot 1994, pp. 13-15;Veneziani 1986, pp. 31, 56-59, 67-68.
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