Gaston Jeze

Gaston Jeze was a French legal scholar who taught public law at the Faculty of Law of Paris and became one of the founders of public finance as an academic discipline distinct from general economics. His analysis of financial phenomena took account of legal, economic, social and political factors together, and his formulation of a law of budgetary and financial equilibrium became known as the law of Jeze. He served as legal counsel to Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia during his exile after the Italian invasion, and during the Second World War he spoke out publicly against the persecution of Jews and other minorities under the Vichy regime. Jeze's scholarship helped establish administrative and financial law as a rigorous, independently taught branch of French public law.