Carlos Petit would later be the title of the second volume of Science et technique) which could not possibly appeal to the freethinking Lambert - nor, we might add, did it appeal to Leon Duguit - during the years when the Third Republic was so intensely experiencing the French version of the German Kulturkampf: “L’appui solide, la ligne precise de directions que prétend nous offrir M. Gény, c’est I’ensemble des problemes perpétuellement agités qui nous divisent le plus.” Before leaving the congress of 1900, we should say that, even though there had been unanimity with respect to cancelling the weighty inheritance of the interpreters of the Code, the basis for a positive proposal would take time in coming: “A mon sentiment,” concluded Lambert, “I’heure est encore prématurée pour arréter les méthodes d’une nouvelle ecole.” Amidst the confusion, only one possible strategy for immediate action seemed available: that advocated by Lambert, which straightforwardly called for the substitution of the Code itself by the analysis of judicial decisions. It was a judge-made-lawpreviously exalted as legal source on account of the criticismof Gény and was academically stressed as the best and most vital channel of access to the Code itself, already irrelevant in substance: “petit livre, rédige au début du siecle, qui porte pourtant déjä bien visible I’empreinte du temps, le Code Napoléon”. It would be erroneous to understand Lambert’s words in a simplistic manner. With the problem properly focused as the newdirection of the lawcurriculum, a question which had always concerned him, the substitution of the Code for judicial decisions in teaching encapsulated an entire theorv of sources, in which the role of the jurist was no less important than in Genv’s thought. If the immediate task awaiting a specialist in private lawat the turn of the century consisted of narrowing the distances between lawin books and law in action, to the advantage of the knowledge of the latter, it was also a matter of acting upon judge-made-law, the central source of the system, this being the most vibrant, but also as variable in the beginnings of a newsolution as potentially destructive within the lines of precedents once they were consolidated. According to Lambert, the role of doctrine was irreplaceable, not only in the establishment of these lines but also in the stimulation of their growth. But on what basis? If the Code was inadequate, a basis would certainly be required, if not for the resolution and systematization of the judicial findings, then at least to prompt them in the manner required by the changing circumstances of legal practice. It is at this point that the mouvement appears, the constant preoccupation of this serious jurist, which, in the era of the bicycle, the automobile and the filmprojector, strikes us as extraordinarily contemporary. And the basis was sought in Comparative Law. Fundamental to this was the methodological legacy which accompanied the new social sciences, from the traditional Toqueville to the modern Durkheim, reaching a high point with Max Weber but always with an emphasis on comparativism. However, 146
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