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Of combats livrés and combats livresques
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2014
Abstract
Commenting on a collection of essays published in honour of Claude Masse, a career law teacher at the Université du Québec à Montréal and an engaged advocate, the author examines social justice scholarship as a genre of legal writing in Quebec. Itself subtitled ‘in search of justice and equity’, the Mélanges Claude Masse offers an opportunity to reflect upon the role of legal scholarship as an instrument of social change by comparing it to legal scholarship that is merely speculative in its ambitions. The influences on Quebec private law scholarship over the past thirty years – the relative newness of career law teaching, the impact of the Quiet Revolution on the theory of sources of law, and the massive weight of civil code revision in legal culture – may explain why writing on social justice in this period has been so resolutely fixed on law reform. Yet this book and the career of Claude Masse point to a second face of legal writing on justice and equity. It is argued here that legal scholarship is itself an act of resistance in that it involves, by its very nature, speaking out in a spirit of difference. The balance of these two themes – legal scholarship as an instrument of social change and legal scholarship as an act of social justice in itself – is a central feature of Quebec's university culture in law.
Résumé
À partir d'une lecture de mélanges publié en hommage à Claude Masse, professeur de carrière à l'Université du Québec à Montréal et avocat engagé, l'auteur étudie les publications de recherche ayant pour objet la justice sociale en tant que genre de la littérature juridique québécoise. Portant le sous-titre ‘en quête de justice et d'équité’, les Mélanges Claude Masse offrent au lecteur l'occasion de réfléchir au rôle de la doctrine en tant qu'instrument d'évolution sociale en la comparant à la doctrine n'ayant que des ambitions spéculatives. La recherche en droit privé a subi des influences particulières au Québec pendant les trente dernières années – la jeunesse relative de la vocation de professeur de carrière, l'impact de la Révolution tranquille sur la théorie des sources du droit, et le poids massif de la révision du code civil dans la culture juridique. Ces influences expliquent, en partie, l'importance des publications ayant pour objet la réforme du droit au cours de cette période. Toutefois, les Mélanges Claude Masse et l'homme que l'ouvrage met en valeur soulignent un deuxième aspect de la recherche en droit visant la justice et l'équité. L'auteur prétend que la recherche juridique peut être vue comme une forme de résistance en soi, abstraction faite de ses finalités, puisqu'elle implique, par sa nature, une prise de parole dans la cité au nom de la différence. L'équilibre entre ces deux thèmes – la recherche en droit comme instrument de changement social, d'une part et, d'autre part, la recherche en droit comme acte de justice sociale en ellemême – est un aspect marquant de la culture universitaire du droit au Québec.
- Type
- Review Essays/Notes critiques
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , April 2004 , pp. 153 - 176
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 2004
References
1 Lafond, Pierre-Claude, ed., Mélanges Claude Masse (Cowansville, Qc: Yvon Biais, 2003) 613 pp.Google Scholar [hereinafter “Mélanges Claude Masse”]. Claude Masse was a professor at the Faculty of Law, Université de Montréal, from 1976 to 1986 and at the Département de sciences juridiques of the Université du Québec à Montréal from 1986 to 2004. He died on July 15, 2004.
2 Forty years ago, Dean Maximilien Caron of the Université de Montréal described the publication of a mélanges presented to a leading judge and part-time dean of that university as “une innovation au Canada français” modeled on the French tradition, and remarked, with what one might take as a civilian's irony for a judicial mélanges, “[i]l faut espérer que ce précédent, chez nous, se renouvelle”: Caron, M., “Préface” in Etudes juridiques en hommage à monsieur le juge Bernard Bissonnette (Montreal: Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 1963) at XI.Google Scholar
3 See generally Brierley, John E.C., “Quebec Legal Education Since 1945: Cultural Paradoxes and Traditional Ambiguities” (1986) 10 Dalhousie L.J. 5.Google Scholar and, for the background on the Université de Montréal, Hétu, Jean, Album souvenir, 1878–1978: Centenaire de la Faculté de droit de l'Université de Montreal (Montreal: Yvon Biais, 1978) at 47 Google Scholar et seq., Some see McGill's Faculty of Law as an exception for Quebec, given the presence of a handful of career law professors that have marked the history of the Faculty from the time of the deanship of R.W. Lee around WW I. But even at McGill, one might well argue that an appreciable change in tone came definitively in the 1960s, coinciding with the establishment of the anti-practitioner ethic in the other Quebec law faculties. This reinforced McGil's confidence to assert its intellectual sense of self, a sign of which was the establishment of a mainstream common law teaching for undergraduates parallel to a course of study that led to the local professions. On this period, see Macdonald, Roderick, “The National Programme at McGill: Origins, Establishment, Prospects” (1990) 13 Dalhousie L.J. 211 at 295 et seq. Google Scholar
4 There are different ways to mark the date, including defining moments associated with the careers of certain pioneer figures. See, for a tribute to a key personality in the emergence of a scholarly voice for Quebec law in the university that coincides with these dates, Leclair, Jean, “Hommage au professeur André Morel” (1994) 28 R.J.T. vii.Google Scholar There were exceptional actors prior to the 1960s whose scholarship, done inside and outside the university, evinced ambitions to transcend the dominant explicative ambitions of Quebec legal writing. Among these, the work of academic lawyer and judge Albert Mayrand has attracted deserved attention: see L'Heureux-Dubé, Claire, Première conférence Albert Mayrand. Albert Mayrand, l'homme et son œuvre (Montreal: Thémis, 1998)Google Scholar and Fernandez, Angela, “Albert Mayrand's Private Library: An Investigation of the Person, the Law of Persons and ‘Legal Personality’ in a Collection of Law Books” (2003) 53 U.T.L.J. 73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 While such books appear occasionally in the Anglo-American literature, it has been observed that their place in the culture of legal scholarship is an under-recognized source in some circles. See, on this theme, Roberts, L.M., “The Importance of Legal Festschriften for Work on International and Comparative Law” (1962) Am. J. Comp. L. 403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In Canada, the changing of the professorial guard in the present generation may mean these books will become more frequent. See, among others that fit with the continental ideal, the fine mélanges prepared for University of Toronto law professor Richard Risk, co-edited by a Quebecer: Baker, G. Blaine & Phillips, Jim, eds., Essays in the History of Canadian Law in Honour of R.C.B. Risk (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 Notably judges, given their prominence in North American legal culture. See, e.g., an excellent biographical and unabashedly celebratory mélanges prepared for Chief Justice of Canada Brian Dickson: Guth, DeLloyd, ed., Brian Dickson at the Supreme Court of Canada 1973–1990 (Winnipeg: Canadian Legal History Project/Supreme Court of Canada Historical Society, 1998)Google Scholar and the mélanges prepared for a “lawyer's lawyer” and esteemed judge, Smith, Lionel D.A., ed., Ruled by Law. Essays in Memory of John Sopinka (Markham, Ont.: Lexis/Butterworths, 2003).Google Scholar It is of course difficult to imagine such devotions being shown as robustly to the judiciary in, say, France, but entirely plausible for Quebec given the status of the judge in the legal caste system here.
7 The cultural standing in France of doctrine has been perceptively explored by two insiders, both of whom are law professors and editors of that country's leading Revue trimestrielle de droit civil, in Jestaz, Phillipe and Jamin, Christophe, La doctrine (Paris: Dalloz, 2003).Google Scholar Professors Jestaz and Jamin distinguished French doctrine from doctrinal analysis as understood elsewhere by emphasizing its “dogmatic” character. They contrasted it, in particular, from a pluralist “anti-modèle” offered by American scholarship which, they argued convincingly, is said to rest upon another cultural tradition. The authors presented Quebec scholarship as a variation of the French tradition (at 2–3).
8 For a hint of explanation of this fundamental ambition of a mélanges from a Quebec scholar, see Verge, Pierre, “D'un mélanges à l'autre: un même droit du travail?” in Beaulne, Jacques, ed., Mélanges Ernest Caparros (Montreal: Wilson & Lafleur, 2002) 203 at 203Google Scholar: “Exprimer leur estime et leur admiration envers l'un des leurs par un ensemble de textes conçus en toute liberté: quel geste pourrait mieux correspondre à la vie universitaire!”.
9 The small Quebec corpus of mélanges follows the typical continental pattern of gathering authors together from different law faculties alongside, to a lesser extent, those from other professional backgrounds, with the occasional contribution from outside Quebec (as often from the French legal academy as from another Canadian university). Exceptionally, an institution will offer the tribute on its own, as was explained in Brierley, John E.C. et al. , eds., “Introductory Note”, Mélanges presented by McGill colleagues to Paul-André Crépeau (Cowansville, Qc: Yvon Biais, 1997) XX at XXI.Google Scholar
10 Single theme mélanges remain the exception, however, especially in Quebec where the number of writers and readers work against this mode. But see, for a recent mélanges devoted to constitutional law scholarship as a “fil conducteur”, Thibault, Pierre, Pelletier, Benoît & Perret, Louis, eds., Les mélanges Gérald Beaudoin. Les défis du constitutionnalisme / Essays in Honour of Gérald Beaudoin. The Challenges of Constitutionalism (Cowansville, Qc.: Yvon Biais, 2002) at IX.Google Scholar
11 There is a small, how-to literature on the genre in law: see, for a lively paper cast in the language of normativity, Rolin, Frédéric, “Les principes gouvernant l'élaboration des volumes de ‘Mélanges’: Contribution à l'étude de la littérature mélangiale juridique” in Mélanges Benoît Jeanneau (Paris: Dalloz, 2002).Google Scholar
12 In keeping with the best editorial tradition for the genre, the hard-cover Mélanges Claude Masse is artfully produced for a deservedly long shelf-life, which is of course exceptional in a discipline where books are generally repealed or overruled in short order. This reflects Professor Lafond's fine eye for detail and his publisher Yvon Biais's personal willingness to invest in a project that in all likelihood will not generate direct returns (author's interview with Mtre Yvon Biais, May 10, 2003).
13 Pierre-Claude Lafond wrote: “S'il fallait résumer en deux mots la brillante carrière du professeur et avocat Claude Masse, l'expression ‘justice sociale’ décrirait certainement mieux l'homme”. He explained how the three areas of study to which Claude Masse devoted much of his career – consumer law, civil liability, contracts – served to organize the book, and served as a sign of how studies in these fields in Quebec are generally “teintées de justice sociale et inspirées des travaux du maître”: “Présentation générale”, Mélanges Claude Masse, 27 at 28.
14 Jean-Louis Baudouin, “Préface”, ibid., XI at XII. Justice Baudouin has written on social justice in private law in a mélanges setting, evoking the contribution of Claude Masse – see Baudouin, Jean-Louis, “Justice et équilibre: la nouvelle moralité contractuelle du droit civil québécois”, Etudes offertes à Jacques Ghestin. Le contrat au début du XXXe siècle (Paris: L.G.D.J. 2001) 29.Google Scholar
15 Lafond, “Présentation générale”, ibid. at 27 wrote of the extent of Professor Masse's different activities for social change “Que de combats livrés! Que de luttes gagnées!”.
16 This is one of the strong themes in Professor Masse's own articles, books and scholarly conferences which are carefully presented in the “Notes biographiques et bibliographie”, ibid. 1 at 9 (although the editor noted at 9 that the sheer number of these works forced him to record only “les productions les plus significatives de sa carrière”).
17 The Département de sciences juridiques at UQÀM in Montreal was founded in the 1970s as an avowedly community-oriented, non-professional and, for some, Marxist setting in which to study law. On its history and founding ethic, see the mélanges of sorts published on the occasion of its tenth anniversary: Bureau, Robert D. and Mackay, Pierre, eds., Le droit dans tous ses états (Montreal: Wilson & Lafleur, 1987).Google Scholar This important book contains a paper co-authored by Claude Masse which is a characteristic example of the genre of reform-minded scholarship discussed in this review: Claude-André Ducharme and Claude Masse, “L'évolution des régimes de compensation du préjudice corporel: entre des victimes à corps perdu et un droit civil à corps défendant”, ibid. 227 as well as a second paper written in a more speculative voice: Claude Masse and Pauline Roy, “Droit de la consommation: le difficile apprivoisement d'une réforme”, ibid. 337.
18 Desmarais, Jacques, “Service auprès de la collectivité”, unpublished address to the 2004 Congress of the Association des professeurs de droit du Québec (17 April 2004), A.P.D.Q. Archives (UQÀM).Google Scholar The Faculté de science politique et de droit, which now nouses the department of ‘juridical sciences’, was created in 2002 as a response to the calls from Claude Masse and other colleagues that sciences juridiques at UQÀM as a discipline had reached a level of autonomy within the UQÀM institutional family as to be deserving of faculty status, as well as recognition by all legal professions. I am grateful to Hugo Cyr and Pierre Mackay for our discussions of this matter.
19 Here too is a feature that one finds, on occasion, in a mélanges where a colleague has a close institutional affiliation. In Quebec, language can be such a marker, as in instances in which the bilingual character of a mélanges expresses a personal commitment and an institutional aspiration: see, e.g., Baccelli, Guido Rinaldi, ed., Liber amicorum honouring / en hommage à Nicolas Mateesco Matte. Beyond Borders / Au-delà des frontières (Paris: A. Pedone, 1989)Google Scholar which includes tributes to Professor Matte's linguistic prowess from the then Commissioner of Official Languages of Canada and the Principal of McGill University.
20 See the summary of his unpublished address, “Le bilan de six années de recherches au Groupe de recherche en consommation”, 1983 Congress of the Association des professeurs de droit du Québec, (14 April 1983), A.P.D.Q. Archives, (UQÀM).
21 See, for an example of how empirical study was understood by Professor Masse as a level for identifying sectors that cried out for social change early in his career, Masse, Claude, Mackaay, Ejan & Hérard, J. (Groupe de recherche en jurimétrie), Vivre ou exister? Étude de l'efficacité sociale des programmes juridiques d'aide aux débiteurs surendettés (Montreal, Faculté de droit de l'Université de Montréal [unpublished, mimeo.], 1975).Google Scholar
22 The tradition must be linked to a mode of thought and action exemplified by a sometime constitutional law professor at the Université de Montréal, notwithstanding the parting of the ways that may have followed: see Trudeau, P. E., La grève de l'amiante (Montreal: Cité Libre, 1956).Google Scholar
23 As did like-minded university colleagues of his generation elsewhere in Canada, Claude Masse helped establish a legal aid clinic (in his case, in Point St. Charles where he co-founded in 1969 the first community legal aid clinic in Quebec): Mélanges Claude Masse at 5.
24 Brooks, S. and Gagnon, A.-G., Les spécialistes des sciences sociales et la politique au Canada. Entre l'ordre des clercs et l'avant garde (Montreal: Boréal, 1994) at 66 Google Scholar, discussed critically in Gagnon, Mona-Josée, “Les intellectuels critiques et le mouvement ouvrier au Québec: fractures et destins parallèles” (2000) 34 Cahiers de recherche sociologique 145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
25 One recent sign of this may be seen in the papers presented at the 2004 Congress of the Association des professeurs de droit du Québec, 17 April 2004, pursuant to the theme “Le professeur de droit dans la cité”, with workshops on the law professor in political life, in the public service, in university governance and interacting with the media (A.P.D.Q. Archives (UQÀM)). Twenty years prior to this event, another A.P.D.Q. Congress was the occasion for a UQÀM professor to speak on the role of university professors to press for social change through their research: see Thomasset, Claude, “Expérience de recherche en sciences juridiques” [unpub. manuscript dated 14 April 1984], A.P.D.Q. Archives (UQÀM).Google Scholar
26 See generally Sarat, Austin, “The Pull of the Policy Audience” (1988) 10 Law & Pol'y 97 CrossRefGoogle Scholar for an influential and still topical appreciation of this trend in U.S. legal literature.
27 Lévy-Bruhl, Henri, Sociologie du droit (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1964) esp. at 92.Google Scholar
28 See the article bearing this title by Dezaleny, Yves in CURAPP (Université de Picardie), ed., La doctrine juridique (Paris: P.U.F., 1993) 230.Google Scholar In a rather less friendly voice, a leading introduction to French law speaks of “des auteurs engagés qui n'étudient le droit que sous un jour politique”: Malaurie, Philippe & Morvan, Patrick, Droit civil: Introduction générale (Paris: Defrénois, 2003) at no 376 (emphasis in orginal).Google Scholar
29 For an account of the most influential Quebec public law scholars working in this mode, written when they were at the height of their powers, see Macdonald, R.A., “La nature, le rôle et l'influence de la doctrine universitaire en droit administratif québécois” (1985) 26 C.deD. 1071.Google Scholar
30 Crépeau, Paul-André, La réforme du droit civil canadien. Une certaine idée de la recodification (Montreal: Thémis, 2003) at 3 Google Scholar linked the reform of the Civil Code, which mobilized dozens of law professors and legal scholars in the 1960s and 1970s, to the ambitions of social reform announced by the Quiet Revolution. Claude Masse was engaged in the reform later as counsel to the official opposition as the Civil Code of Québec was enacted, and he is reputed to be one of the ghost writers for the publicly circulated travaux préparatoires.
31 For an account of the influence this reformist ethic had in Quebec on the place of scholarship for law in the making, see Popovici, Adrian, “Dans quelle mesure la jurisprudence et la doctrine sont-elles sources du droit au Québec?” (1973) 8 R.J.T. 189.Google Scholar
32 This is a theme in Macdonald, R.A., “Civil Law – Quebec – New Draft Code in Perspective” (1980) 58 Can. Bar Rev. 185.Google Scholar
33 While Masse himself was too young to have been swept up in the vast mobilization of legal academics in the work of the Civil Code Revision Office, the dominant place of law reform in his own work might be said to reflect, in part, the C.C.R.O.'s influence. See, e.g., a series of paper he published in various publications of the Bar of Quebec following the enactment of the Civil Code of Québec, including Masse, Claude, “Le point sur la réforme du Code civil” in Congrès annuel du Barreau du Québec (1990) (Montreal: Barreau du Québec, 1991) 28 Google Scholar and “Le nouveau code et la réforme de la responsabilité civile: à la recherche d'un sens” in Congrès annuel du Barreau du Québec (1991) (Montreal: Barreau du Québec, 1991) 35.
34 See Bellamy, Richard, “The Intellectual as Social Critic” in Jennings, Jeremy & Kemp-Welch, Anthony, Intellectuals in Politics (London: Routledge, 1997) 25 at 41.Google Scholar
35 This theme is plain in one of the first papers he published in a peer review setting: Masse, Claude, “Étude critique de la réforme de l'assistance judiciaire en France – Droit et pauvreté: chroniques régulières” (1974) R. du B. 577.Google Scholar
36 See, e.g., Masse, Claude, “L'équité contractuelle” (1979) Meredith Memorial Lect. 48.Google Scholar This paper is helpful in tracking the influence Professor Masse had on the preparation of consumer protection legislation in Quebec.
37 This theme, present his earliest works, reflected not only a Quiet Revolution heritage but a confidence in the empirical tradition of French legal sociology of the 1970s (e.g., Belley, J.-G., Hamel, J. and Masse, C., La société de consommation au Québec. Quebec City: Éditeur officiel, 1980).Google Scholar It remained present in his last work, as made plain by his introduction to a colloquium on family law and its relationship to social realities in Quebec: Masse, Claude, “Présentation (Quelle famille? Les réalités sociales et la nécessaire adaption au droit)” (1999) 33 R.J.T. 303.Google Scholar
38 For a critical evaluation of this view rooted in a sensibility for informal law as a source of social justice, see Vanderlinden, Jacques, “À propos de la vocation de notre temps à la revision de la théorie des sources du droit et des instruments de justice” in Kasirer, N. and Noreau, P., eds., Sources et instruments de justice en droit privé (Montreal: Thémis, 2002) 585 at 622–23.Google Scholar
39 See Gardiner, John, “Law as a Leap of Faith” in Oliver, Peter et al. , eds., Faith in Law (London: Hart, 2000) 25 at 27Google Scholar in which the author compared a belief in the inherent force and power of positive law in the Kelsenian tradition to a belief in God.
40 See, for an early and strong-worded article that took shape as the form of a high-minded plea for social change for consumers through enacted law, Masse, Claude, “L'information et l'exploitation des consommateurs” (1979) 10 R.G.D. 90.Google Scholar Interestingly, this paper expressed a strong doubt that courts could be counted on to counter perceived excesses of freedom of contract (at 97).
41 But see, on the signs of what might be described as consumer law in the Middle Ages, Marion, Normand, “Le droit de la consommation et la réglementation des métiers de l'empire romain et de l'époque médiévale” in Mélanges Claude Masse, 147 Google Scholar and Jean-Calais-Auloy, “Brève histoire du droit français de la consommation”, ibid. 257, on the “preconsumerist” period up to the middle of the 20th century, during which time jurists practised consumer law “comme monsieur Jourdain faisait de la prose, sans le savoir” (257 at 260).
42 The Mélanges includes a number of contributions to the classical problem as to whether consumer law is best understood to be outside of the fundamental law in the Civil Code. Jean-Guy Belley examines why civilian scholarship has been unable to theorize properly adhesion contacts, while consumer law scholars have managed to do so, on the basis of a distinctive “code interne de la conception du contrat”: Belley, , “La Loi sur la protection du consommateur comme archétype d'une conception socioéconomique du contrat” in Mélanges Claude Masse, 119 at 125.Google Scholar The theme of the awkward cohabitation of consumer law and the general law of obligations is explored in connection in light of the divergent rules on compensation in André Bélanger, “Compensation, cession de créance et consommation”, ibid. 231, with interesting emphasis – given the law reform scholarly mode – in part 3 as to suggestions that consumer law be the basis for a shift in droit commun.
43 Brierley, John E.C., “The Renewal of Quebec's Distinct Legal Culture: The New Civil Code of Quebec ” (1992) 42 U.T.L.J. 484 at 490CrossRefGoogle Scholar who situated this debate in which Claude Masse had an important voice in a broader context. Through the controversy, consumer contract moved in and out of draft proposals for the law of special contract for the proposed Civil Code of Québec. It never obtained this exalted status, and the choice to place it at art. 1384 C.C.Q., as the last provision in a section of the chapter on contracts dealing with the ‘nature and certain classes of contract’, might be read as a concession to lobbying as much as a definition of the fundamental law, in particular given its divergence with the Consumer Protection Act, R.S.Q., c. P-40.1. On this dissonance, see Lafond, Pierre-Claude, “Contours et ramifactions de la ‘nouvelle’ définition du contrat de consommation du Code civil du Québec” (1996) 56 R. du B. 569 at 606.Google Scholar
44 Claude Masse himself presented a nuanced view of the advantages and disadvantages of sealing consumer law within the august but relatively static Civil Code – see Masse, “Le droit de la protection du consommateur et le Code civil du Québec, interdépendances et complémentarités” (2000) R.E.D. consommation 61.
45 Masse was a consultant for the Quebec ministry of consumer affairs, cooperatives and financial institutions from 1975 to 1980 during which time he was a draftsman of the Consumer Protection Act, S.Q. 1978, c. 9, R.S.Q., c. P-40.1: Mélanges Claude Masse at 4. Reforming the law of consumer protection engaged the energies of another Quebec law professor, then minister in the Quebec government: Tetley, William, “Epilogue [The New Consumer Protection Act of Quebec]” (1979) Meredith Memorial Lect. 289.Google Scholar
46 Masse, Claude, Loi sur la protection du consommateur: analyse et commentaires (Cowansville, Qc: Yvon Biais, 1999).Google Scholar This 1500 pages critical study was awarded the Prix de la Fondation du Barreau du Québec. Masse was, at the time of his death, preparing the volume on consumer law for the Traité de droit civil collection under the general editorship of Professor Paul-André Crépeau at McGill's Quebec Research Centre of Private and Comparative Law.
47 Lafond, , “Présentation des études de droit de la reponsabilité civile” in Mélanges Claude Masse at 317.Google Scholar
48 One fine example is Ejan Mackaay, “La responsabilité civile extracontractuelle – une analyse économique”, ibid., 318 at 347, who concludes his economic analysis of the transaction costs in the basic regime for civil liability with the injunction “pour concevoir les correctifs appropriés, il faut bien comprendre la mission et la logique de l'institution à corriger. L'analyse économique du droit peut apporter ici une contribution indispensable”.
49 Daniel Gardner, “Pour une réorganisation des régimes d'indemnisation du préjudice corporel”, ibid. 387, especially part II. Professor Gardner's own interventions in the popular press in defense of legislative no-fault compensation schemes might be seen as a demonstration of the fact that a law professor can have more influence from the university chair than from a chair in the National Assembly: see his remarks on this role of the engaged intellectual in D.Gardner, “Le professeur de droit dans la cité: L'intervention à titre de profeseur – devoir ou privilège?”, 17 April 2004, A.P.D.Q. Congress, supra, note 25.
50 Vézina, Nathalie, “L'exonération fondée sur l'état des connaissances scientifiques et techniques, dite du ‘risque de développement’: regard sur l'élément perturbateur dans le droit québécois de la responsabilité du fait des produits”, Mélanges Claude Masse, 435 at 465.Google Scholar
51 Pierre-Claude Lafond, Lison Néel & Hélène Piquet, “L'émergence des solutions de rechange à la résolution judiciaire des différends en droit québécois de la consommation: fondement et inventaire”, ibid. 179 at 229: “De deux choses l'une” write the authors: “soit l'État se doit d'améliorer réellement l'accès des consommateurs au système judiciaire, soit il doit favoriser le développement de mécanismes non traditionnels, impartiaux, objectifs, indépendants et légitimes” (emphasis in original).
52 Thus the advent of consumer protection law is presented in the language of a ‘struggle’, where advances in the law are depicted as “des acquis”, as in the case of Thierry Bourgoignie's study of the European setting: “Droit et politique communautaires de la consommation: une évaluation des acquis”, ibid. 273 (playing on the expression acquis communautaire that is part of the European legal lexicon);
53 See notably, Atias, Christian, “Une doctrine de combat pour un droit menacé” in Mélanges Christian Mouly, t. 1, (Paris: LITEC, 1998) 13 Google Scholar where the struggle is described as one “mené pour rétablir une liberté d'interprétation des règles et de composition du droit, qui puise sa force et ses limites en elle-même” (at no 11).
54 Lefebvre, Brigitte, “La négociation d'un contrat: source potentielle de responsabilité extracontractuelle”, Mélanges Claude Masse, 571 at 576.Google Scholar Building on her influential work on the formation of contracts, Professor Lefebvre argues that the absence of a written rule dealing with good faith in pre-contractual dealings does not present a juridical void. She concludes with a suggestion that the nature of the obligation of good faith in this setting needs to be settled otherwise than by the enactment of a new legal rule (at 592).
55 See Vincent Karim, “La clause pénale et le pouvoir de révision des tribunaux”, ibid. 529 at 531 who argues for a more careful exercise of the traditional interpretative role of the courts in the appreciation of penal clauses as a means of advancing just outcomes.
56 This idea is raised with some examples in Brisson, Jean-Maurice & Kasirer, Nicholas, “Note to the 2003–2004 Edition”, Code civil du Québec: Édition critique / Civil Code of Québec: A Critical Edition, 2003–2004, 11th ed. (Cowansville, Qc: Yvon Biais, 2003) at XVIII and XX.Google Scholar
57 Masse, Claude, “Fondement historique de l'évolution du droit québécois de la consommation”, Mélanges Claude Masse, 37 at 45.Google Scholar He relied on historical analysis of the legislative setting in Quebec which he described as “porteuse de la raison d'être du droit de la consommation” (at 52). Professor Jean-Guy Belley carried forward Masse's epistemological inquiry, in a similarly speculative mode in the next paper in the volume, although Belley relies on the methodology of a legal theorist: Jean-Guy Belley, supranote x at 123–4 (invoking Masse's study as foundational).
58 Benoît Moore, “Autonomie et spécificité de l'article 1436 C.c.Q.”, ibid., 593 at 597 identified a speculative mode in Claude Masse's other work in consumer contracts in his introduction: “en pensant à l'homme à qui on rend hommage dans ces pages, il nous a semblé pertinent d'y aller de quelques réflexions, non pas sur l'application que l'on a fait ou que l'on devrait faire de cette notion, mais essentiellement de la nature de celle-ci”.
59 For a recent consideration of the divide, parsed in the language of jurisprudence, see Haack, Susan, “Truth and Justice, Inquiry and Advocacy, Science and Law” (2004) 17 Ratio Juris 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
60 On this distinction in 16th century continental legal thought, see Jean-Louis Thireau, “La doctrine civiliste avant le Code civil” in CURAPP, supra, note 28, 13 at 45. I am grateful to Pierre Legrand for this reference.
61 Campos, Paul F., “Advocacy and Scholarship” (1993) 81 Calif. L. Rev. 817 at 818.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Professor Campos makes his case, so to speak, by arguing that the dominance of this discourse is rooted in the grip the Supreme Court of the United States and the Harvard Law Review have on American legal thought.
62 In The Cultural Study of Law: Reconstructing Legal Scholarship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), Paul Kahn wrote that law professors in the United States work in a narrowly legal mode even when they argued for the reform of legal institutions: “legal scholars are not studying law, they are doing it” (at 27).
63 Sarat, Austin, “Redirecting Legal Scholarship in Law Schools” (2000) 12 Yale J.L. & Human. 129 at 130.Google Scholar Professor Sarat links this to Paul Kahn's view of the cultural study of law where “all questions of reform – the traditional end of legal study – are bracketed” (citing Kahn, ibid., at 2).
64 See, for a pessimistic reading of doctrine in France trapped in the theory of sources, Bredin, Jean-Denis, “Remarques sur la doctrine” in Mélanges offerts à Pierre Hébraud (Toulouse: Université des Sciences sociales de Toulouse, 1981) 111 at no 11–12.Google Scholar
65 Troper, Michel, “Rapport de synthèse de l'atelier 1 (identité de la recherche)” in Stern, Brigitte, ed., Livre blanc des Assises nationales de la recherche juridique (Paris: L.G.D.J., 1991) 26 at 27.Google Scholar One might argue that the very form of a ‘white paper’ shows an established instrumentalist orientation for legal thought, as the editors of this work acknowledge (at 7).
66 See, in comments by a Quebecker, Scott, F.R., “Report of the Committee on Legal Research” (1956) 34 Can. Bar Rev. 999.Google Scholar
67 Consultative Group on Research and Education in Law ( Arthurs, Harry, chair), Law and Learning – Le droit et le savoir: Report to the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada (Ottawa: S.S.H.R.C, 1983)Google Scholar, where this ‘fundamental’ brand of research is contrasted with, among other things, research which seeks to reform the law.
68 Cohen, Maxwell, “Book Review: Law and Learning – Le droit et le savoir: Report to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada” (1983) 61 Can. Bar Rev. 702 at 705.Google Scholar
69 Murbach, Ruth, “Editorial – Dossier: The Arthurs Report on Law and Learning” (2003) 18 Can. J. L. & Soc'y 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Murbach is a law professor at UQÀM sensitive in her work to the variance in modes of social justice scholarship alluded to in this essay. Two other Quebec comments on this heritage are Lajoie, Andrée, “Le Rapport Arthurs vingt ans plus tard: ‘commentaire sur les commentaires'” (2003) 18 Can. J.L. & Soc'y 45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Macdonald, R.A., “Still ‘Law’ and Still ‘Learning’?” (2003) 18 Can. J. L. & Soc'y 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
70 See, e.g., Létourneau, Jocelyn, “L'intellectuel comme penseur et passeur” (2001) 180 Spirale 16 Google Scholar in which the debate is taken up with respect to Quebec's sensibilities in identity politics.
71 See Brunet, Manon & Lantier, Pierre, “L'intellectuel et son milieu” in L'inscription sociale de l'intellectuel (Quebec City: P.U.Laval/Harmattan, 2000) 11 at 13Google Scholar who, in citing the debate around the Quebec scholars place in public life, allude to French writer Julien Benda's classic La trahison des clercs (1927) which argued that political engagement can betray the cause of a contemplative life.
72 Macdonald, R.A., “Understanding Civil Law Scholarship” (1985) 23 Osgoode Hall L.J. 573 at 588.Google Scholar
73 Jobin, Pierre-Gabriel, “L'équité en droit des contrats”, Mélanges Claude Masse, 471 at 476.Google Scholar
74 Charpentier, Élise, “L'article 8 de la Loi sur la protection du consommateur comme symbole de la transformation de la lésion”, Mélanges Claude Masse, 509 at 524–25.Google Scholar
75 Morin, Michel, “Une analyse historique et comparative de l'indemnisation du solatium doloris au Québec”, Mélanges Claude Masse, 347 Google Scholar (noting at 386 that the legislature “expurge” art. 1056 C.C.L.C. with the enactment of the Civil Code of Québec in 1991).
76 See, e.g., Peczenik, Aleksander, “Can Philosophy Help Legal Doctrine?” (2004) 17 Ratio Juris 106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
77 See, on this view, Aristodemou, Maria, Law and Literature. Journey from Here to Eternity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) at 5–6.Google Scholar
78 For an early work that can be understood as both instrumental and speculative, see Masse, C. & Marois, M., La règle du jeu: enquêtes auprès des organismes de consommation et des consommateurs plaignants (Montreal: Université de Montréal (Groupe de recherche en jurimétrie), 1976).Google Scholar This nearly 300-page monograph, available in English under the title of Rules of the Game, is at once a manual of access to justice for consumers, a vibrant plea for law reform, and a reflection piece on the implicit normativity in the law of consumer contracts.
79 Including a famous sortie in the newspapers which suggested that the government of the day misjudged the importance of the reform in the manner that it moved the new code through the legislative process: Masse, Claude, “Le dépôt du projet de Code civil du Québec: une atteinte inacceptable au débat démocratique”, La Presse [Montreal], February 27, 1991.Google Scholar
80 See, e.g., his contributions to an historic colloquium on the 1988 Draft Bill on Obligations that would become, after modifications provoked in part by suggestions made at this Université de Montréal meeting in 1989, Book V of the Civil Code of Quebec: Masse, Claude, “L'Avant-projet de Loi et la protection des consommateurs” (1989) 30 C. de D. 827 Google Scholar and “L'Avant projet de Loi sous l'angle de la responsabilité du fabriquant et des vendeurs spécialisés” (1989) 30 C. de D. 627.
81 Masse's own sense of this irony can be felt in Masse, Claude, “Le recours aux travaux préparatoires dans l'interprétation du nouveau Code civil du Québec” in Côté, P.-A., ed., Le nouveau Code civil du Québec: interprétation et application – Journées Maximilien Caron 1992 (Montreal: Thémis, 1993) 149 (check).Google Scholar
82 Manderson, Desmond, “Apocryphal Jurisprudence” (2001) 26 Australian J. Legal Phil. 27 at 39.Google Scholar
83 Some of the best work in the law reform mode has been advanced by Quebec feminist legal scholars with a broad taste for work coming from other disciplines. See, by a colleague of Masse, Claude, Lamarche, Lucie, “Le féminisme québécois, la crise des droits et la recherche sur le droit: quelques raisons de s'inquiéter (…) et quelques autres d'espérer” (2000) 34 Cahiers de recherche sociologique 99 at 126.Google Scholar
84 Belley, supra, note 42 at 124–5 and 145–46.
83 Bourgoignie, supra, note 52.
86 Mackaay, supra, note 48.
87 Moore, supra, note 58.
88 Claude Masse's colleague at UQÀM, René Laperrière, noted that there is a small number of jurists devoted to what he described as “l'acquisition de connaissance poursuivie pour elle-même, pour le seul plaisir de savoir” in R. Laperrière, “À la recherche de la science juridique” in Robert Bureau and Pierre Mackay, supra, note 17, 514 at 523.
89 Schroeder, Jeanne, “The Stumbling Block: Freedom, Rationality and Legal Scholarship” (2002) 44 William and Mary L. Rev. 263 at 266.Google Scholar
90 For a classic example, reviewed and corrected recently in another mélanges, see Picard, Étienne, “‘Science du droit’ ou ‘doctrine juridique’” in Mélanges Roland Drago. L'unité du Droit (Paris: Economica, 1996) 119.Google Scholar
91 As, for example, the difficult distinction between scholarly inquiry based on “investigation extrinsèque” and “investigation intrinsèque” to law: Cabrillac, Michael, “Un domaine à explorer par le chercheur: les démarches de l'investigation juridique” in L'avenir du droit. Mélanges en hommage à François Terré (Paris: Dalloz/Presses universitaires de France/Juris-classeur, 1999) 167.Google Scholar
92 Cohen, supra, note 68 at 702.
93 Here too the mélanges setting has been an occasion to inquire as to why this equilibrium is so hard to achieve: see Giraud, Émile, “Les déformations professionnelles des professeurs de droit” in Mélanges Séfériades, vol. I (Athens: Aohnai, 1961) 266 Google Scholar (pleading for involvement in activities outside the academy for professors).
94 This affective dimension is a common feature of the genres, often finding expression in an intimate hommage to the colleague in place of scholarly papers. The Mélanges Claude Masse exudes such warmth without renouncing its primary purpose of a tribute that is at once scholarly and fraternal (see Brigitte Lefebvre's allusion to this at supra, note 54 at 573).
95 Professor Lafond gave a compelling tribute to Claude Masse at the annual congress of the Association des professeurs de droit du Québec in April, 2002 at Mont-Gabriel, Quebec, in which he described Professor Masse's influence on his own career and the careers of private lawyers teaching at UQÀM: see Lafond, Pierre-Claude, “Hommage à Claude Masse”, unpublished address, A.P.D.Q. Archives (UQÀM).Google Scholar
96 Jestaz, Philippe and Jamin, Christophe, “L'entité doctrinale française” D. 1997, Chron., 167.Google Scholar
97 Consider, as classic examples of each of these three mélanges' themes, Carbonnier, Jean, “Nocturne” in Droits de l'antiquité et sociologie juridique: Mélanges Henri Lévy-Bruhl (Paris: Sirey, 1959) 345 Google Scholar; Lévy-Bruhl, Henri, “Dissentiones prudentium” in Syntelea Vincenzo Arangio-Ruiz (Naples: Jovene, 1964) 532 Google Scholar and Josserand, Louis, “La protection des faibles par le droit” in Legal Essays in Tribute to Orrin Kipp McMurray (Berkeley: University of. California Press, 1935) 221.Google Scholar The last article is discussed in the Mélanges Claude Masse by Professor Charpentier, supra, note 74 at 523.
98 The labours and expenses associated with the production of mélanges, in particular in Quebec where the main market is limited by language and a professionalist tradition amongst private sector law publishers, no doubt inhibits the publication of these works. The European practices of soliciting in advance of publication a list of subscribers for the book, or enlisting the patronage of a publishing house or even private sector funding, has been experimented with here in recent years. For a rare sortie on the travails of producing a melanges, written by the general editor of three such books, see Caparros, Ernest, ed., Melanges Germain Brière (Montreal: Wilson & Lafleur, 1993) XIII–XVI.Google Scholar
99 Ricard, François, La Génération lyrique (Montreal: Boréal, 1992)Google Scholar referring to the cohort of baby-boomers who have dominated Quebec's political and intellectual culture, in the universities, government and elsewhere, for whom a philosophy of state-initiated social change has been a central philosophical assumption (at 116).
100 As was noted in respect of Professor Jean Pineau of the Université de Montréal on the recent publication of a liber amicorum in his honour: Lluelles, Didier, “De Jean Pineau” in Moore, Benoît, ed., Mélanges Jean Pineau (Montreal: Thémis, 2003) at XX.Google Scholar
101 Of law professor, public servant and judge Jean Beetz it was said: “Aussi sut-il, dans une société ballottée entre l'instinct de conservation et la soif du renouveau, indiquer la voie de l'avenir tout en préservant les précieux héritages grâce à des balises savamment jalonnées”: Carignan, Pierre, “Hommage” in Mélanges Jean Beetz (Montreal: Thémis, 1995) at 9.Google Scholar
102 See de Boulois, Xavier Dupré, “Guide de l'utilisateur” in Bibliographie des Mélanges – droit français / Bibliography of French Legal Fetschrifien (Paris: La mémoire du droit, 2001) 15 at 16Google Scholar, remarking on the necessity of a comprehensive bibliography for French contributions to mélanges. His excellent work contains 15,012 entries and cross-entries. A large number of Quebec mélanges are included.