Dissertation

Lawyers and politics in eighteenth century Paris (1700-1790)

Bell, David Avrom

1991

Overview

This thesis studies the role played by members of the Parisian legal profession in political life under the ancien regime and at the beginning of the French Revolution. It focuses on three groups in particular: barristers (avocats), attorneys (procureurs), and law clerks (clercs de la Basoche). After a brief survey of social backgrounds, professional duties and cultural lives, the focus turns to the effective creation of the Parisian Order of Barristers in the years around 1700. Barristers had earlier left their affairs in the hands of magistrates. But, it is argued, relations became strained, and an independent bar association was established, both to uphold the profession's status, and to advance political causes, notably the defense of the current of Catholic thought called Jansenism. Barristers defended Jansenists in sensational printed legal briefs, which were immune from censorship. When the crown tried to punish them for these actions, they successfully protected themselves by going on strike. They also staged strikes to support the sovereign courts' opposition to royal policies, and to protect their own symbolic prerogatives. While barristers thus enjoyed a degree of autonomy, attorneys remained enveloped in a traditional, confining corporate structure. By mid-century, barristers, thanks in large part to this autonomy, emerged as the leading polemical writers in the struggle over the rights of the crown. But their very success attracted into the profession men who sought to use this protected platform to advance more \"enlightened\" causes. For a time, it is argued, the leadership managed to contain these newcomers. However, during the political chaos of the Maupeou Crisis (1771-74), the leaders withdrew from the bar, leaving the field to their opponents, who used the opportunity to introduce a flamboyant new style of legal practice, and theories of advocacy which exalted reason and sentiment above traditional jurisprudential learning. The Order never recovered its previous authority. The thesis ends with a discussion of the participation of barristers and law-clerks in the \"pre-Revolution,\" and the 1790 decision by the Constituant Assembly to abolish the Order alongside more traditional corporations, thus ending its professional monopoly.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: European history
• ISBN: 9798207667249