Geoffroi Jacques Flach

Geoffroi Jacques Flach (1846 to 1919) was a French jurist and historian, born at Strasbourg into a family that had produced the first professor of law at the University of Strasbourg. He studied classics and law there and took his doctorate of law in 1869, and in his early writings he sought to explain legal problems through history, an idea new in France at the time. After the Franco-Prussian War he chose to settle in Paris, completed his training at the École des Chartes and the École des Hautes Études, and in 1879 became assistant to Édouard René de Laboulaye at the Collège de France, succeeding him in 1884 in the chair of comparative legislation. He taught comparative law at the free school of political sciences from 1877, published lectures on the agrarian history and politics of Ireland, and devoted his chief work, Les Origines de l'ancienne France, to the history of ancient French law and the origins of feudalism.