Louis Josserand

Etienne Louis Josserand was a French jurist who lived from 31 January 1868 to 8 November 1941, born in Lyon and serving for decades as dean of the law faculty there, honorary dean from 1913 to 1935, before becoming a counselor at the Court of Cassation in 1938 and president of the Society of Comparative Legislation. He is best known for developing the modern French doctrine of abuse of rights, distinguishing a subjective form, where a legal right is exercised with the deliberate intent to harm another, from an objective form, where a right is exercised in a manner inconsistent with its social purpose regardless of the holder's state of mind, an analysis that shaped how French and other civil law courts have since limited the exercise of formally valid legal rights. His major works include De l'Esprit des Droits et de leur Relativite, subtitled Theorie dite de l'Abus des Droits, and Les Mobiles dans les Actes Juridiques du Droit Prive, and he was elected to the Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts of Lyon in 1930 and later co-authored the Lebanese code of obligations and contracts.