Fromparis tothe Hague in the new century, a handful of jurists from the Société frangaise de Législation comparée, (which formally sponsored the meeting) engaged the authorities of the Third Republic in the organization of an international congress on Comparative Law. It was a gathering of legal experts and ministerial technicians, including university lecturers, who were granted minority representation on the organizing ccammittee. The identity of those responsible is relatively unimportant. What does interest us is the fact that the initiative was based on intellectual concerns and boasted the tireless activity of Raymond Saleillcs, who set the rules of the game right fromthe beginning.The supranational dimension which by that time was regarded as essential in certain social sciences and which was being sought after in public law, criminal law and criminology, required a refinement of certain comparative methods which, moreover, began to interest the staunchly self-contained world of private law when, as in the France of the Centennial, the text of the national code proved to be already insufficient: the analysis of other more modern foreign laws, but, above all, the knowledge of their judicial decisions and their doctrine, could and must guide the national legislator, together with the more ambitious horizon of a future international legal unification. Between that inadequate law and this eventual droit commun de la humanité civilisée - to use Saleille’s terminology -, the jurist once again emerged as a crucial figure. Comparative Law, a legal science which appeared at this point and was about to be constituted, would be the necessary instrument for renewing the debate over sources of law and for permitting a cooperation among jurists the world over who were no longer to play the role of mere exégétes. The problemof method proved to be the key issue during the Paris congress and it was discussed by the most eminent of those present: Saleilles himself, Josef Kohler, Frederick Pollock, Adhémar Esmein, Rudolf Sohm and Gabriel Tarde. And at Saleille’s request, the task of drawing up the rapport général, of summing up all these contributions, fell to Lambert. “A I’heure présente, le droit compare ne constitue pas une branche unitaire de la literature juridique,” recalled Lambert with fairness, understanding that the results of his work were important for setting up the newdiscipline and would establish the basis for its development, at least for the entire first third of the century. The old “Comparative Legislation” was set aside, resolved in introductory studies of foreign law. The scientific existence of a “Comparative Law” was proclaimed which sought, in the face of the purely sociological orientation which the mission assigned it, “de révéler au jurisconsulte les lois naturelles auxquelles obéissent ces manifestations de la vie sociale dont I’ensemble compose le droit”. This was genuine legal science, “non plus d’observation et de decouverte, mais de ■*' Cfr. Proces-vcrbaux des seances et documents cit. 1, pp. 1 ss., especially Raymond Saleilles, “Conception et objet de la science du droit compare”, 167-189, which is the base of Lambert’s rapport, 26-60. 143
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=