France -- Civilization; France -- Politics and government; France -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
Napoleon, in his preparation of jurists, wants executants and not
critics; his faculties must furnish him with men able to apply and not
to give opinions on his laws. Hence, in the teaching of the law, as he
prescribes it, there must be nothing of history, of political economy or
of comparative law; there must be no exposition of foreign legislation,
of feudal or custom law, or of canon law; no account of the
transformations which governed public and private law in Rome down to
the Digest[6225] and, after that, in France, down to the recent codes.
But nothing on remote origins, on successive forms and the diverse and
ever-changing conditions of labor, property and the family; nothing
which, through the law, exposes to view and brings us in contact with
the social body to which it is applied. That is to say, this or that
active and human group, with its habits, prejudices, instincts, dangers
and necessities; nothing but two dry, rigid codes, like two aerolites
fallen from the sky ready-made and all of a piece at an interval
of fourteen centuries. At first, the Institutes,[6226] "by cutting
out[6227] what is not applicable to our legislation and replacing these
matters by a comparison with much finer laws scattered through other
books of Roman law," similar to the classes in the humanities, where
Latin literature is reduced to the finest passages of the classic
authors. Next, the French code, with the comments on it due to the
decisions of the court of appeals and the court of cassation.[6228] All
the courses of lectures of the school shall be obligatory and arranged
as a whole, or tacked on to each other in a compulsory order; each step
the student takes shall be counted, measured and verified every three
months by a certificate, and each year by an examination; at these
examinations there shall be no optional matters, no estimate of
collateral studies or those of complimentary or superior importance.
The student finds no attraction or benefit in studies outside of
the programme, and, in this programme he finds only official texts,
explained by the bill of fare, one by one, with subtlety, and patched
together as well as may be by means of distinctions and interpretations,
so as to provide the understood solution in ordinary cases and a
plausible solution in disputed cases, in other terms, a system of
casuistry.[6229]
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