Fromparis to the hague 145 immediately devoted himself to reading this work and fromthe pages of a pedagogical journal, a true vehicle for European propagation of the positive mentality, he offered the first practical results of the use of his conception of a droit comrnun législatif.'^^' And we should not consider that forumto be indifferent: in the field of legal pedagogy of the era, proposals were discussed which contained a model of order,'*^ when legal doctrine, a doctrine which, above all, had to do with teaching - it is a termwhich arises fromthis context - the practice of the policy of law: “Dans chaque pays, la valeur des institutions juridiques nc depend pas uniquement de la sagesse ct de Taetivité du legislatcur; clle depend aussi de 1’étendue et de I’intensite de la culture intellectuellc qui y est fournie par les universités aux spécialistes du droit, en vue de leur preparation professionnellc”d*^ The entire conception of the French university thus made it possible/*^ As we know, Geny’s work culminated a line of shared antiexegctical thought in which, judging fromthe conclusions of his thesis on the contract in favour of the third party (1893), Lambert himself was to be found. Thus no problem was encountered regarding the condemnation of the Exegesis and of the restrictive philosophy which it advocated: “La partie la plus remarquable de I’ouvrage,” wrote Lambert referring to Gény, “e’est I’oeuvre de destruction; e’est la critique de la methode traditionelle, critique pénétrante, et dont toutes les conclusions ä peu pres, appuyees sur une discussion solide ct serrée, me paraissent incontestables.” Lambert, however, proved to be very sceptical with respect to the constructive part, concerning the position of Geny with regard to the sources. First and foremost he called into question his respect for the statute (“M. Gény n’ose pas, comme moi, s’insurger ouvertement contre le dogme de Timmobilité de la loi, reconnaitre que souvent la loi se trouve climinee par le jeu de l’evolutlc')n de la vie”) and his narrowconception of custom, so indebted to the Pandektistic, which in substance involved relegating precedents as a means of manifesting and establishing legal rules; but, above all, he impugned all of the libre recherche scientifique, which, although it left an almost unlimited field of action to the interpreter, for Lambert it also implied an unacceptable return to the old natural law. Gonfronted with exegetical positivism, the Catholic Gény in effect proposed an irréductible droit naturel (which Edouard Lambert, “Une reforme nécessaire des etudes de droit civil”, in Revue Internationale de I’Enseignement (=RIE), 40 (1900), 216-243. l.éon Duguit, “Le droit constitutionncl ct la sociologie”, in RIE 18 (1889), 484-505; Maurice Elauriou, “Cretaion de salles de travail por conferances et cours de doctorat ä la E'acultc de droit de rUniversitc de Touluse”, ibd. 41 (1901), 547-558; Ravmond Saleilles, “Les métbodes d’enseignement et I’cducation intellectuelle dc la jeunesse”, ibd. 44 (1902), 329 ss.; id., “Conference sur les rapports du droit et la sociologie”, ibd. 48 (1904), 420-423. Edouard Lambert, Lafonction du droit civil compare, cit. p. 822. George Wiesz, The Emergence of Modern Universities in France, 1863—1914, Princeton (N.J.), Princeton University Press, 1983.
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