Justinian’s Corpus Iuris Civilis so out of contact with the social and religious realities of early Byzantium? Why did it then become so relevant for subsequent legal history? What are the lessons? Why is the structure of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch and the code civil so different? Does one provide a better model than the other for the future? Does it make sense to keep separate codes for private law and commercial law? For what reasons and in which circumstances did such a distinction arise and survive? What are the roots of modern codification? Do codes show the way ahead? What is the relationship between the English law and the law of continental Europe? Is there a bar to future harmonization other than that of the tradition and culture of lawyers? Should the way ahead for the integration of law in Europe lie in a new system of legal education?215 My personal experience has been that professorial colleagues do not want to know about legal culture and legal tradition, about comparative legal history. They positively want to believe that law reflects (in whatever sense) the needs of society. Change in law results for them from change in society. To believe otherwise is uncomfortable for them. They would have to rethink the rationale of their discipline, and question their basic assumptions. Students, again in my experience, are more open-minded. French citizens show enthusiasm for the code civil, Germans for the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch. But neither code is written in stone. What difference would it make, or should it make, if future lawyers realize that both codifications were framed greatly under the influence of legal education in their time? The French codification owes much to the basic textbook of Gabriel Argou, Institution au droit François (th edition, );216 the German to the university teaching of 215 I am at the moment at work on a book on the poor quality of legal education at many times in many places in the western world. 216 See, e.g. WatsonMaking of the Civil Law, pp. 111f.
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