François Gény

Gény 1934

François Gény (born December 17, 1861 in Baccarat , † December 16, 1959 in Nancy ) was a French legal scholar and one of the intellectual fathers of modern methodology .

life and work

Gény was born as the fourth of twelve children of the Lorraine forest ranger Alfred Gény. After graduating from high school in 1878, he studied law at the University of Nancy . There he obtained his doctorate on March 16, 1885 after graduating. From November 1887 he taught as a lecturer in Algiers , where he was appointed professor of Roman law by the university there on April 12, 1889 . In November 1890 he followed a call from the University of Dijon to an extraordinary chair; on December 1, 1892 he was appointed full professor of civil law there. In November 1901 he moved to the University of Nancy, where he taught and researched until his retirement in 1931. From 1919 to 1925 he was dean of the local law faculty.

Gény is one of the most important legal theorists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The legal understanding of his time was characterized by a strict legal positivism . The doctrine predominantly took the view that the legislature had already decided positively on all problems to be regulated. Legal loopholes are to be closed strictly from the wording of the standard. The only possible legal training instrument was thus the analogy and the reverse . Like some of his contemporaries (including Léon Duguit and Maurice Hauriou ), Gény was of the opinion that the legislature could not presumably regulate all sorts of issues because of the complexity and size of society as a whole. In particular, the judge, as the primary user of the law, is therefore called upon to close any gaps in the law that may arise fairly and in the general good. This view has also found its way into the German Civil Code in Section 242 of the German Civil Code ( BGB). Genys doctrine had great influence on the German Free School of Law . He also played a key role in the creation of the Polish Civil Code and the Swiss Code of Obligations .

Awards

• 1914: Honorary doctorate from the University of Groningen
• 1927: Honorary doctorate from the University of Leuven
• 1929: Honorary doctorate from the University of Warsaw
• 1929: Honorary doctorate from the University of Brussels
• 1930: Honorary doctorate from the University of Geneva
• 1934: Honorary doctorate from the University of Iași
• 1933: Member of the Boston Academy of Sciences
• 1934: Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur
• 1935: Honorary doctorate from the University of Lausanne
• 1936: Honorary doctorate from the University of Basel
• 1937: Honorary doctorate from the University of Athens

Works (selection)

• Méthode d'interprétation et sources en droit privé positif (in two volumes 1899, second edition 11919).
• Des droits sur les lettres missives (1911)
• Science et technique en droit privé positif: nouvelle contribution à la critique de la méthode juridique (1914, fourth edition 1924)

literature

• Gerd Kleinheyer and Jan Schröder: German and European lawyers from new centuries . 5th edition. CF Müller, Heidelberg 2009, ISBN 978-3-8252-0578-2 , pp. 321-323 .
• O. Cachard, François-Xavier Licari & François Lormant (eds.), La pensée de François Gény, Dalloz, 2013
• Deux articles en hommage à François Gény - Revue trimestrielle de droit civil - April / June 2010, n ° 2, Dalloz
• Le centenaire du doyen François Gény , Dalloz, 1963