Paper's abstract
Christophe
Jamin,
Boissonade and his Time
Who was Gustave Boissonade, today admittedly the "French father of modern Japanese law", and what is his philosophy ? Doctor in law in 1852, he graduated at the concours d'agrégation des Facultés de droit in 1864 at the age of 39, and was called as an agrégé to the Faculté de droit de Paris as early as 1867, he was send on a mission to Japan between 1874 and 1895, when he came back to France and ceased all intellectual activity after realizing his project of a civil code was rejected by the Japanese society. Boissonade is then completely a lawyer of the second half of the 19th century. On this behalf, he seems to have come too early and at the same time too late on the legal French scene, which turns him into an heir and a precursor. Heir because if he did not participate in introducing the ideas of the German historical school in France, he takes them on, at least as they were perceived by French lawyers who adhere to a jusnaturalist and spiritualist philosophy he also wants to promote. Heir also by linking himself to the exegetic doctrine, of which he uses the rationalist postulate powdered with christian spirit as well as the method to analyze texts. But Boissonade is also a precursor, even if he does not at all anticipate the sociological revolution of the turn of the century. In a time when political economy is not yet well perceived by the French law faculties, he forcefully defended their teaching. Moreover, his jusnaturalism brings him near liberal economists then domineering who defend the idea of a natural order which he intends to translate on the juridical level. The same jusnaturalism also allows him to be one of the first, if not the best known, philosopher to defend a universalist conception of comparative law. One must however think this conception sunk his project of civil code when it appeared to him as a mere technical expression of natural law. Boissonade is ultimately a author emblematic of his time : eclectic and liberal, he shares at the same time the promises, the contradictions and perhaps its shortcomings.
Key Words : Boissonade, Japan, codification
t. 44, 2000 : p. 285-312
