Louis Le Fur
Louis-Erasme Le Fur (17 October 1870 – 23 February 1943), was a French jurist and legal scholar. Already appointed professor at the age of 27, he worked for decades mainly at various universities and rarely took on assignments outside the academic framework. As an international lawyer, he advocated a return to a universal tradition which he saw realized in a natural law and which was inextricably linked with Christian morality.
In the 1920s, a dispute between the university and the government over whether a chair should be filled by him or Georges Scelle led to troubled arguments that ended in Le Fur's favor. After his retirement, in the last years of his life, at the time of the German occupation of France, he advocated cooperation with the occupying power in the press. In his previous work, he had stated that 19th century Germany, with its political and legal thinking and its culture, bore the main responsibility for destroying the authority of tradition.
Le Fur founded the journal Archives de philosophie du droit et de sociologie juridique in 1931 and published in the Revue générale de droit international public.
Contents
Biography
Family
Le Fur descended from a Catholic-Conservative family and was born as the eldest child of Louis Jules Le Fur (1840-1914) and Hélène Béraud (1846-1923). His father was admitted to the bar and from 1884 to 1911 substitute judge in Pontivy and from 1882 to 1892 mayor of the city. Le Fur had four siblings, his brother and doctor René Le Fur (1872–1933) was known for his militant royalism and his presidency of the Entente Nationale. In 1900, he married Marie Auvray (1870–1920), and the marriage resulted in two daughters. After the death of his wife, Le Fur married Andrée-Germaine Herpin, a teacher (agrégée de lettres) in Strasbourg in 1923.
Academic career
After studying in Rennes and Paris, Le Fur received his doctorate in 1896 with his dissertation État Fédéral et Confédération d’États under Louis Renault, who had already been his professor of international law when he obtained his diploma. Just a year later, after his first participation in a selection process chaired by Léon Duguit, he received one of two advertised posts and became professor of constitutional law in Caen. From 1919, he worked as a professor of international law in Strasbourg, followed by a professorship in constitutional law in Rennes in 1922.
In 1925, the Paris Law Faculty had designated Louis Le Fur as its candidate for a new appointment, but Herriot’s education minister, François Albert, the epitome of the secular militant left, nominated Georges Scelle, whereupon the faculty protested almost unanimously against this disregard for university autonomy. Right-wing students disrupted Scelle's lectures, which led to the suspension of Dean Henri Barthélemy and the temporary closure of the faculty. In the National Assembly, the government was condemned from all sides for its actions, the latter finally gave in, so that Le Fur could take up his professorship in 1926.[1]
He retired in 1940.
International activities
In 1920, Le Fur was appointed as arbitrator for the Franco-German Mixed Court of Arbitration, which was created following the Treaty of Versailles. For the Permanent Court of International Justice, he dealt with a case relating to the jurisdiction of the Gdańsk courts. In the 1930s, Le Fur took part in the work of the Union juridique internationale (UJI), which was thinking about the creation of a European Union. He was professor at The Hague Academy of International Law three times (1927, 1932 and 1935) and a member of the Institut de Droit International and the Académie Diplomatique Internationale.
Writings
Legal philosophical and political views
In his dissertation, État fédéral et confédération d'États (1896), Le Fur spoke of confederations of states since antiquity, and presented an outlook in favor of a European confederation, even if it would take many years until then. He saw the conclusion of contracts, as would be done in South America, as a role model. For the more distant future he hoped for a world alliance.
Le Fur was a previous critic of solidaristic theories, as he countered Léon Duguit and Georges Scelle, that it is not solidarity but morality that is the decisive human character. Solidarism accompanied by anti-metaphyical individualism must lead to anarchy. He shared solidarism's criticism of voluntarism and sovereignty, but this did not apply to the trust in sociology that goes hand in hand with a rejection of tradition.[2]
Le Fur interpreted the vulnerability of pre-war internationalism as a story of sins and their punishments, a turning away from morality and an uncontrolled slide into violence. The loss of authority was caused by an unfortunate development in German political and legal thought and German culture, which he traced back to Martin Luther. He saw Immanuel Kant's methodological doubts about man's ability to recognize the good as a particularly serious cause of the perceived decline of values in Germany. This must lead to a subjective idealism, which was used by authors of Romanticism in the form of admiration for a folk nationalism. The categorical imperative represents an irrational escape from skepticism, which places excessive demands on the individual. Kant's moral system would have to collapse under his weight and then make way for the Hegelian state or Nietzsche's amoralism.[3]
Le Fur considered an authoritative sense of the common good to be necessary, otherwise there would be a permanent state of potential war between states, and there is no longer any starting point for preventing war from happening. If the law were to be equated with the will of the state, this would lead to the end of all morality and ultimately to the end of civilization. There is no alternative between a law overriding human will or material violence. Autonomy leads to nationalism and war, even liberal nationalism, which sees the state as a voluntary union, only leads to constant efforts to secede or to state tyranny if these are combated.[4]
According to Le Fur, German positivist historicism, which excluded universal morality, stood for a majority principle that was only limited by popular aspirations and that, in the form of a popular spirit, had to lead to the submission of all to the state. A positivist nationalism is said to be an expression of racism and constricts people to their physique, rejecting their moral nature and opening the door to reproductive manipulation. In general, for Le Fur, any deviation from tradition was associated with a German doctrine; these doctrines would in turn serve as justification for violence. Accordingly, in his writings in the 1920s and 1930s, he sharply turned against subjectivism, voluntarism, positivism, formalism and historicism, which he branded as the wrong track in German philosophy.[5]
Le Fur rejected racism as unscientific. The Germans in particular show the greatest degree of intermingling. But he related this to Europe, he did not doubt that there were other peoples who were actually inferior and to whom international law could not apply. He also considered war to be necessary to enforce law, provided that it was in harmony with natural law. Le Fur defended a "just war"[6] against criticism that the criteria for such a war would encourage political abuse; this criticism is formulated from an absolute point of view, but man lives in a relative world, disagreement between people is not an argument against natural law, but a manifestation of the weakness of human reason.[7]
As a desirable path for the future, Le Fur envisaged an authoritarian federalism with a pyramidal structure. He saw the state as an indispensable basis that cannot simply be reduced to a contract between free people. The state is ultimately the expression of the will to live together, a political synthesis of conflicting expressions of will that overcomes these conflicts by striving for the common good. Once the states were linked to one another in such a system and individualism, racism and an unhealthy nationalism had been abandoned, the world could regain the unity that was lost with the Reformation and Enlightenment. A system of sanctions is just as necessary as a spiritual power that is the sole guardian of morality: the Roman Catholic Church.[8]
See also
Works
- État Fédéral et Confédération d'États (1896)
- Étude sur la Guerre Hispano-américaine de 1898: Envisagée au Point de Vue du Droit International Public (1899)
- Des Represailles en Temps de Guerre: Represailles et Reparations (1919)
- Guerre Juste et Juste Paix (1920)
- Races, Nationalités, États (1922; preface by René Johannet)
- La Théorie du Droit Naturel depuis le XVIIIème Siècle et la Doctrine Moderne (1928)
- Les Accords du Latran (1930)
- Philosophie du Droit des Gens (1932)
- L'Affaire de Leticia (1934)
- Les Sanctions Internationales: Trois Opinions de Juristes (1936; with Achille Mestre and Georges Scelle)
- Les Grands Problèmes du Droit (1937)
- La Guerre d'Espagne et le Droit (1937)
- Liberté de l'État et Bien Commun International (1939)
- Éléments de Droit International Public (1941)
Selected publications
- "La Souverainité et le Droit," Revue du Droit Public et de la Science Politique en France et à l'Étranger, Vol. (1908)
- "La Paix Perpétuelle et l'Arbitrage International," Revue Générale de Droit International Public, Vol. XVI (1909)
- "L'Équivoque Démocratique," La Foi Catholique, Vol. XIII (1914)
- "L'Équivoque Démocratique (suite)," La Foi Catholique, Vol. XIV (1914)
- "Kant et le Droit des Gens," Annales de l'Institut Supérieur de Philosophie de Lôuvain, Vol. V (1924)
- "Le Droit Naturel et la Théorie de l'Institution," La Vie Intellectuelle, Vol. X (1931)
- "La Démocratie et la Crise de l'Etat," Archives de Philosophie du Droit et de Sociologie Juridique, Nos. 3/4 (1934)
Miscellania
- Traité général de l'État. Essai d'une théorie réaliste du droit politique, by Marcel de La Bigne de Villeneuve (1929; preface)
- La Société Internationale et les Principes du Droit Public, by J. T. Delos (1929; preface)
- La Petite Entente, by Florin Codresco (1932; preface)
- L'Idée du Droit Social: Notion et Système du Droit Social: Histoire Doctrinale depuis le XVIIe Siècle jusqu'à la Fin du XIXe Siècle, by Georges Gurvitch (1932; preface)
- Le Pacte de la Société des Nations et la Constitution Française: Esquisse d'une Étude sur la Constitutionnalité Intrinsèque des Traités, by Germain Watrin (1932; preface)
- Ce qu'il Faut Savoir sur le Désarmement, by André-D. Tolédano (1932; preface)
- L'Institution. Le Droit Objectif et la Technique Positive: Essai Historique et Doctrinal, by André Desqueyrat (1934; preface)
- "Règles Générales du Droit de la Paix," Recueil des Cours, Vol. LIV (1935)
- La Prescription en Droit International Public, by P. A. Verykios (1935; preface)
- Position Juridique du Conflit du Chaco Boréal, by Arturo Ramirez (1935; preface)
- Essai sur la Notion de Règle de Droit en Droit International, by Adrien C. Corbu (1935; preface)
- Leçons de Philosophie du Droit, by Giorgio Del Vecchio (1936; preface)
- L'Idée du Droit: Essai sur quelques Conceptions Contemporaines, by François Emanuel (1937; introduction)
- "L'Intervention pour Cause d'Humanité". In: Vitoria et Suarez: Contribution des Théologiens au Droit International Moderne (1939; chapter)
- La Thaïlande et ses Relations avec la France, by Kontsri Subamonkala (1940; preface)
Works in English translation
- The Vilna Question (1929; with Albert Geouffre de Lapradelle and André N. Mandelstam)
- The League of Nations and the Present Crisis (1934)
Notes
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External links
- Works by Louis Le Fur at Gallica
- Works by Louis Le Fur at JSTOR
- Works by Louis Le Fur at Hathi Trust
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- ↑ Koskenniemi 2004, 316–17.
- ↑ Koskenniemi 2004, 319.
- ↑ Koskenniemi 2004, 319–20.
- ↑ Koskenniemi 2004, 321.
- ↑ Koskenniemi 2004, 321–22.
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- ↑ Koskenniemi 2004, 322–23.
- ↑ Koskenniemi 2004, 324–26.
- Pages with reference errors
- 1870 births
- 1943 deaths
- 20th-century jurists
- Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur
- French legal scholars
- Members of the Institut de Droit International
- People from Morbihan
- University of Caen faculty
- University of Rennes faculty
- University of Paris faculty
- University of Strasbourg faculty