Ecole De L’Exegese

Introduction

The French wording École de l’Exégèse (“School of Exegesis”) is used, since the beginning of the twentieth century, to point out the method of legal interpretation and the style of the Napoleonic Code commentators during the nineteenth century. In a 1904 discourse celebrating 100 years of the Civil Code, the dean of the Paris Law School, Ernest Glasson, was the first to use this complete phrase to identify the deference shown to the Napoleonic Code by the professors teaching civil law (Halpérin 2003). The choice of the word Exegesis made an analogy between the respect of the Holy Scriptures and the sacred character recognized in France to the Napoleonic codification since 1804. Exalted as the genial product of the emperor-lawgiver during the First Empire (in 1807 the Code civil des Français was officially rebaptized Code Napoléon), maintained by all the political regimes after the 1814–1815 collapse of Napoleon, the Code was considered as the true social constitution of...