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Paul-Louis Huvelin

French legal historian

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 16, 2025
Entity authorityQ30126924 ↗
Source-derived summary

Paul-Louis Huvelin (French: [yvəlɛ̃]; 11 April 1873, Mirebeau-sur-Bèze – 2 June 1924, Lyon) was a French legal historian.

He was a specialist in the study of the earliest forms of Roman law.

Biography

Huvelin spent almost all his career teaching in the law faculty of the University of Lyon which he joined in 1899. That year he made contact with the anthropologist Marcel Mauss and, as a result, gradually became involved with the group of pioneer French sociologists organised by Mauss' uncle Emile Durkheim. Huvelin, as a respected jurist, was welcomed into the Durkheim group and contributed regularly to Durkheim's famous L'Année Sociologique yearbook, from its sixth volume, published in 1906, until the series was suspended on the outbreak of the First World War. Huvelin made important contributions to the sociological study of the earliest forms of Western law. His imaginative if sometimes speculative scholarship explored links between magic and the emergence of ideas of private rights. He also tried to reformulate Durkheim's own ideas of law to make them more compatible with the instrumental legal outlook of jurists.

Towards the end of his life he became involved with efforts to shore up waning French influence in the Middle East. As an offshoot of the Lyon law faculty's involvement with legal education in territories associated with France, he was instrumental in the founding of the law school of the Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut in 1913.

Editorial summary

“Paul-Louis Huvelin” enters the record as french legal historian. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Paul-Louis, Huvelin and French can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1873, 1924, 1899, 1906—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1873-04-11. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Paul-Louis, Huvelin and French.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Paul-Louis Huvelin” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Paul-Louis, Huvelin and French provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 16, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q30126924. VIAF identifies the subject as 47132185. The Library of Congress control number is n86142025. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1873, 1924, 1899 and 1906.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Paul-Louis Huvelin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.