Louis Le Fur

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Louis Le Fur (1926)

Louis Érasme Le Fur (born October 17, 1870 in Pontivy , † February 22, 1943 in Evry-Petit-Bourg ) was a French lawyer . Already appointed professor at the age of 27, he worked for decades mainly at various universities and only rarely took on assignments outside the academic framework. As an international lawyer , he represented 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 professorship 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, among other things. 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.

Life

family

Le Fur comes 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, an adjunct professor ( 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 license . Just a year later, after his first participation in a selection process chaired by Léon Duguits , he received one of two advertised positions and became professor of public law in Caen . From 1919 he worked as a professor of international law in Strasbourg , followed by a professorship for constitutional law in Rennes in 1922.

In 1925 the Paris law faculty had designated Louis Le Fur as their candidate for a new appointment, but the French left-wing government 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. In 1940 he retired.

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 International Court of Justice , he dealt with a case relating to the jurisdiction of the Danzig 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 three times professor at the Hague Academy for International Law (1927, 1932 and 1935) and a member of the Institut de Droit international and the Académie Diplomatique Internationale .

Act

Legal philosophical and political views

The dissertation Le Furs has already been translated into German in greatly abbreviated form. Following a description of confederations of states since antiquity, Le Fur spoke out in favor of a European confederation in an outlook, 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 distant future he hoped for a world alliance.

Le Fur was a previous critic of solidaristic theories, he countered Léon Duguit and Georges Scelle , saying that morality, not solidarity, is the decisive human character. Solidarism accompanied by anti-metaphyical individualism must lead to anarchy. Le Fur 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.

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 of 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 in 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 makes too great 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 .

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 entering. If the law were to be equated with the will of the state, this would lead to the end of all morality and ultimately 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.

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 an expression of racism and constricts the human being to his physique, rejecting its 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 a justification for violence. Correspondingly, in his writings in the 1920s and 1930s, he turned sharply against subjectivism , voluntarism, positivism, formalism and historicism, which he branded as the wrong track in German philosophy.

Le Fur rejected racism as unscientific; the Germans in particular show the greatest degree of mixing. 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" 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.

As a desirable path for the future, Le Fur envisaged an authoritarian federalism with a pyramidal structure. He saw the state as an indispensable foundation 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 connected 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 .

Writing and other activities

In 1931, Le Fur founded the specialist journal Archives de philosophie du droit et de sociologie juridique and published in the Revue générale de droit international public .

Despite his earlier anti-German attitude, Le Fur was benevolent towards the occupying power during the German occupation of France, even if he and his former rival Scelle had condemned the persecution in Germany at the end of the 1930s. He wrote articles for the collaborating Je suis partout , for the occupation organ Brussels newspaper and other papers. Le Fur was also a member of the Groupe Collaboration . In an article published in August 1942, he described the role of the Jews as fatal.

Awards

Works (selection)

  • Races, nationalités et états. Alcan, Paris 1922
  • Le Saint-Siège et le droit des gens. Sirey, Paris 1930
  • Les grandsproblemèmes du droit. Sirey, Paris 1937
  • Précis de droit international public. Dalloz, Paris 1939 (4th edition, translated into Arabic, Japanese, Serbian, Spanish and Czech)
  • État fédéral et confédération d'États. Édition Panthéon-Assas "Les introuvables", Paris 2000, ISBN 978-2-913397-17-0 (dissertation 1896)

literature

  • Martti Koskenniemi : The Gentle Civilizer of Nations. The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, ISBN 978-0-521-54809-0 , pp. 317-327 (with an emphasis on Le Fur's legal philosophy).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Martti Koskenniemi : The Gentle Civilizer of Nations. The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, ISBN 978-0-521-54809-0 , pp. 316-317.
  2. ^ Heinz Duchhardt : Option Europe. German, Polish and Hungarian European plans of the 19th and 20th centuries . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 978-3-525-36287-7 , Volume 2, pp. 177-178.
  3. ^ Martti Koskenniemi : The Gentle Civilizer of Nations. The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, ISBN 978-0-521-54809-0 , p. 319.
  4. ^ Martti Koskenniemi : The Gentle Civilizer of Nations. The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, ISBN 978-0-521-54809-0 , pp. 319-320.
  5. ^ Martti Koskenniemi : The Gentle Civilizer of Nations. The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, ISBN 978-0-521-54809-0 , p. 321.
  6. ^ Martti Koskenniemi : The Gentle Civilizer of Nations. The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, ISBN 978-0-521-54809-0 , pp. 321-322.
  7. ^ Martti Koskenniemi : The Gentle Civilizer of Nations. The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, ISBN 978-0-521-54809-0 , pp. 322-323.
  8. ^ Martti Koskenniemi : The Gentle Civilizer of Nations. The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, ISBN 978-0-521-54809-0 , pp. 324-326.
  9. ↑ Brussels newspaper based on Rolf Falter: De Brussels newspaper (1940-1944) in: Historica Lovaniensia 137, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Departement geschiedenis), Leuven 1982, p. 70. Remaining based on Simon Epstein: Un paradoxe français. Antiracistes dans la Collaboration, antisémites dans la Resistance. Albin Michel, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-226-17915-9 , p. 112.
  10. ^ Wedding announcement in L'ouest éclair of December 3, 1922, p. 5.
personal data
SURNAME Le Fur, Louis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Le Fur, Louis Érasme
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French legal scholar
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Pontivy
DATE OF DEATH February 22, 1943
Place of death Evry