LAW 145 



paid to international law and administrative law all 

 these influences helped to open new fields of investiga- 

 tion outside of the Civil Code. 



With this shifting of emphasis, the last quarter of the 

 century began to see active attention paid to the other 

 and now dominant fields of legal interest. During the 

 last forty or fifty years, and increasingly so in that period, 

 every department of the world's legal thought has been 

 represented in France by master minds in the university 

 chairs and by treatises embodying the most approved 

 methods and original results in legal research. 



In Latin America and in some European countries 

 (such as Belgium, Greece, and Roumania), the study of 

 the French Codes is the study of their source-law. But 

 for American students, no country's law, except that of 

 England, presents such a direct reason for pursuing its 

 advanced study abroad. Technical law is essentially 

 local; its materials are largely the legislation and practice 

 of each country. In this respect, legal science differs 

 from (let us say) mathematics or zoology. 



Nevertheless, law has its universal aspects, and they 

 are growing with each decade. Among the important 

 topics which thus have an extra-national value and 

 interest for the legal scholar are Roman Law, Compara- 

 tive Law and Legislation, Legal History, Philosophy of 

 Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law, Interna- 

 tional Law, Criminology and Criminal Law. 



In all of these fields, France offers interesting and 

 valuable opportunities for university study under the 

 most accomplished masters. 



But before noting the instruction offered in these 

 particular subjects, a few words may be offered regard- 

 ing some other features of French law interesting to 

 the American lawyer. 



