Fromparis to the hague 141 inherited and still very much present legalistic model proliferate, a new technical focus concerning the theory of legal sources also becomes possible for the foundation of a new legal common sense expressed with the idea of legal pluralism,’*^ to which the contribution of the historian grants sense and coherence.^° The disavowal of modernity’s legal absolutism, provided it is done by an expert in other juridical areas of specialization, can return would-be ontologies which have little to do with our own experience of the present to the annals of history, can give due value to the past and explore the future,^' but can also offer arguments for study. Froma European perspective, it is important to stress that the very appearance of comparative currents would at that time be admirable in the face of the ingrained continental conception of a powerful State which was, above all, legislative, and which made no concessions to the normative expression of the social bodies or to the overriding importance of doctrine and precedents as sources of law. The newness of the comparative approach, fantastically unitarian, was thus able to contain the reluctance of jurists with regard to the codes, or at least to provide an alternative for those who were dissatisfied with the Exegesis. And in North America, which at the time was beginning to gain influence as the prime representative of Common Law, the comparative approach could provide the technical means to dispense with the encumbrances of a judicial lawfragmented by the very nature of federal organization, incompatible with the needs of a national market undergoing rapid transformations.^-^ It could also become a source of prestige for the legal academician, given that the respectability of teaching and the legal profession was still so recent following the inclusion of law teaching in the limbo constituted by the universities. This last affirmation can be explained in general terms, since an attempt was obviously being made on both sides of the Atlantic to establish a scientific communitv in search of references concerning Comparative Law. However, this was no easy task because legal education now had to be released fromthe strait-jacket of codes and cases, the interlocutors of the national jurist being alBoaventura Sousa Santos, “Law: A Map of Misreading. Toward a Postmodern Coneeption of Law:, inJournal of Laze' andSociety. 14 (1987), 279-302. Id., Introdugdo a urna ciéncia pos-nioderna, Porto, Edi(5'6es Afrontamento, -1990. Paolo Grossi, “Epieedio pr I’assolutismo giuridieo (dietro gli Atti di tin Convegno milanese e alia rieerea di segni)”, in Quaderni fiorenttni, 17 (1988), 518-532. Paolo Grossi, Ahsolutisrnojuridico v derecho privado cn el siglo XIXeit. Cfr. G. Edward White, “FromSoeiologieal Jurisprudenee to Realism: jurisprudence and Social Ghange in Fiarlv Twentieth-Centurv America” (1972), now in Patterns of American Legal Thought, Indianapolis (Ind.), Bobs-Merrill, 1978, 99-135; Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Laze, 1870-1960. The Crisis ofLegal Orthodoxy, NewYork etc,. Oxford Universite Press, 1992. Robert Stevens, Laze School. Legal Education in America from the ISSO’s to the I980's, Chapel Hill etc.. University of North Carolina Press, 1983 (reimp. 1987), pp. 51 y ss. (Harvard). 33
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