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³ See Milet, Marc, La Faculté de droit de Paris face à la vie politique de l'affaire Scelle à l'affaire Jèze, 1925–1936 (Paris: LGDF, 1996). On the republicanism of the nineteenth-century French Bar, see Nord, Philip, The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in 19th century France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), chapter 6; Karpik, Lucien, Les Avocats entre l'Etat, le Public et le Marché (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), chapter 2–3; Debré, Jean-Louis, La Justice au XIXe siècle: Les Républiques des Avocats (Paris: Perrin, 1984).Google Scholar

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⁸ Sorlin, Pierre, Waldeck-Rousseau (Paris: Colin, 1966), 89. Although the whole notion of an “exegetical school” has been overstated, and was largely a construction of sociological reformers of the turn of the century, academic training was perhaps one area where the term was usefully descriptive. See Dubouchet, Paul, La Pensée Juridique avant et après le Code civil (Paris: L'Hermès, 1994), 147–60, and Atias, Christian, “Philosophic du Droit: les enjeux d'une fin-de-siècle,” in L'Evolution de la Philosophie du Droit en Allemagne et en France depuis la fin de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, ed. Planty-Bonjour, Guy and Legeais, Raymond (Paris: PUF, 1991), 235–73.Google Scholar

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¹⁰ Fortoul, Rapport, 22 August 1854 and Danton, Rapport, 4 April 1856, cited in Motte, Olivier, “La Faculté de Droit de Paris et le Ministère de l'Instruction Publique au XIXè siècle” (D.E.S. Thesis, University of Paris II, 1974), 112.Google Scholar

¹¹ Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire Cujas de droit et de sciences économiques (hereafter CUJ) 11.090 pièce 8, “Projet de decret portant creation à la faculté de droit de Paris d'une section administrative et économique” (1869). See also Sandra Horvath-Peterson, Victor Duruy & French education: liberal reform in the Second Empire (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

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¹⁴ For example, the Commission rejected the idea of reinstating the course in constitutional law out of concern for the possible “disruptions” it might provoke; Archives Nationales (hereafter AN) AJ 16 1791, Régistres des déliberations du Conseil et de l'Association de la Faculté de Droit, June 1871–April 1872; see also Gerbod, , La Condition Universitaire, 530–31.Google Scholar

¹⁵ AN AJ 16 1791, 6 May 1872.Google Scholar

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¹⁷ Ibid., 65, 83. On the use of competition as a guiding principle of educational reform, see André Dauteribes, “Laboulaye et la réforme des études de droit.” Revue d'Histoire des Facultés de droit et de la science juridique 11 (1990): 13–53.Google Scholar

¹⁸ AN AJ 16 1792, 25 November 1875.Google Scholar

¹⁹ AN AJ 16 1792, 25 November 1875; 2 December 1875. The question of exams was discussed at length in the meetings of 24 December 1879 and 8 January 1880.Google Scholar

²⁰ Weisz, , Emergence of Modern Universities, 5.Google Scholar

²¹ AN AJ 16 1792, 11 April 1878.Google Scholar

²² AN AJ 16 1792, 8 May 1878 and letter to the provost of 29 March 1880. The Civil code would be the subject of seven out of a total of eighteen exams, instead of six of nineteen during the three years of study for the licence. In the meeting of May 15, 1878, several professors expressed particular concern over the effects this might have on the fate of Roman law.Google Scholar

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²⁵ In his analysis of Second Empire education policy, Patrick Harrigan found that 70 percent of lycée students planning to study law were from what he termed “the traditional upper class,” more than double the total number who completed secondary studies. He also noted the heavy degree of social reproduction in the law faculty, with about half of the students having fathers who had also attended, and concluded it was the least open of all the professional schools in the late Second Empire. According to an 1865 report, advanced study in law was the goal of the single largest group of students at the secondary level. Patrick Harrigan, Mobility, Elites, and Education in French Society of the Second Empire (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1980), 32, 36, 72. See also Gerbod, Paul, “The Baccalaureat and Its Role in the Recruitment and Formation of French Elites in the 19th century,” in Elites in France: Origins, Reproduction and Power, ed. Cerny, Philip and Howarth, Jolyon (London: Frances Pinter, 1981), 53–54.Google Scholar

²⁶ AN AJ 16 1791, 17 April 1872. The changing social makeup of the student body is corroborated by himself, Louis Liard, who noted the “dramatic decline” in the financial “ease” of middle class students at the law faculty. See Liard, Louis, “La Réforme de la la licence en droit.” RIE 18 (1889).Google Scholar

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²⁸ AN AJ 16 1792, letter of 29 March 1880. Students were required to have a certain number of inscriptions in order to take each of the successive exams. These rules were published annually in the Guide-Manuel de l'Etudiant en Droit distributed to students.Google Scholar

²⁹ AN AJ 16 1792, 24 December 1879.Google Scholar

³⁰ AN AJ 16 1791, 13 June 1872. Cheating was no doubt facilitated by the fact that students could have copies of the various law codes with them while writing the exam, as discussed in a meeting of June 27, 1872.Google Scholar

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³² AN AJ 16 1797, 6 March 1901.Google Scholar

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⁴⁰ This reality was noted by contemporaries and was reflected in the distribution of scholarships among the various faculties. Compared with students from the faculty of letters, law students were virtually excluded from consideration for financial aid until 1897. See Moulinier, Pierre, La Naissance de l'étudiant moderne (XIXe stiècle) (Paris: Belin, 2002), 96–97.Google Scholar

⁴¹ See AN AJ 16 1794, 17 May 1887. Two professors who were members of the reformist Sociéeté de l'enseignement supérieur, Bufhoir and Duverger, voted against the faculty's decision to maintain this system of privilege of seniority, which essentially guaranteed that traditional teaching would continue to dominate and new trends would remain marginal for another generation. This tendency was confirmed in 1890, when the Paris faculty council rejected a proposal to create a national competitive examination for faculty appointments in order to reestablish the balance between Paris and the provincial doctoral programs; see AN AJ 16^* 1795, 26 February 1890. Charle, , République des Universitaires, 272.Google Scholar

⁴² Liard, , “Réforme de la Licence,” 117.Google Scholar

⁴³ The proposal was voted down by eleven votes to four with four abstentions; AN AJ 16^* 1795, 22 March 1890.Google Scholar

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⁴⁵ Ibid., 547.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ “Higher education is rightly considered today as one of the sources of general ideas which, when spreading from one level (couche) to another, end up becoming part of the nation's moral sensibility. As much as the other faculties, more than the others in some regards, the law faculties have a hand in this work.” Ibid., 533.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ibid., 551. On the importance of natural law discourse to eighteenth-century lawyers, see David Bell, Lawyers and Citizens: The Making of a Political Site in Old Regime France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

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⁵⁰ CUJ 96.310, “Circulaire du Conseil Supérieur de l'Instruction Public,” 8 April 1892; AN AJ 16 993, Dossier Bufnoir.Google Scholar

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⁶¹ But as a professor of criminal law noted, his field had not evolved for a quarter century in France, whereas in Italy, where scholars took advantage of sociological approaches, it was vibrant and dynamic. See Paul Cuche, “L'enseignement du Droit Pénal en France.” RIE 38 (1899): 291. On the influence of the Italian model of legal education, see Ernest Dubois's, “Review of Giuseppe Carle's La Vita del Diritto nei suoi rapporti coll Vita Sociale.” RIE (1881): 330–32.Google Scholar

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⁶⁶ Patrick Harrigan concludes that because the law faculty had no organized entrance examination such as those required for the Ecole Polytechnique and other grandes écoles, upper class students were more drawn to it. The presence of a formal examination tended to encourage students who depended on a purely meritocratic form of education and not one, like the law faculty, where the appreciation of students’ work remained more subjective. Harrigan, Mobility, Elites, and Education, 70.Google Scholar

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