Without homogenizing it retrospectively, one can see in Maurice Hauriou’s thought a great unity. Beyond the necessary inflections of a perpetually questioning mind that always refused fidelity to a system, even that of St Thomas Aquinas, the intellectual itinerary of the Toulouse jurist shows striking coherence. From his earliest writings, the outlines of his main thesis are fixed: a broad vision of the science of law, including sociology and history; a naturalist definition of the law inherited from his Catholic anchoring; a concomitant defense of the authority of the state and rights of the individual; a clear distinction between public and private law; and a complete break with the constitutional law resulting from the Revolution (the cult of the law, the ideology of national sovereignty, the mystique of parliamentary representation, the devaluation of the judicial authority). The dean of Toulouse finally developed a kind of synthesis integrating traditional themes of nineteenth-century Catholicism to a liberal conservatism compatible with the Republic.