French Jurists Research Articles

Bibliothèques aixoises du XVe siècle (1433-1448)

The library inventories studied here concern a Dominican archbi-schop, a Benedictine law professor, a rational member of the Chamber of Audits, a lawyer, a notary and a surgeon. The southern character of these collections is not very strong : common language appears only in utilitarian writings and the rare litterary texts cited are written in French ; however, law books, by far the most numerous, give a large place to southern French jurists. Scholastic theology dominates the elites’s religious culture in Aix. As for the laity, must of them strengthened their faith with matins or books of hours.

Les fonctions de la métaphore du mariage politique du roi et de la république en France, XVe-XVIIIesiècles

« Épouse et n'épouse pas ta maison »René CharParmi les métaphores qui aident les juristes à penser les rapports entre le roi et le royaume, celle du mariage politique occupe une place privilégiée.L'analogie est le pont aux ânes des scolastiques, ancienne ou nouvelle, et la fiction un procédé familier à la pensée normative. Au sens précis, la fiction consiste à accorder à une personne le statut juridique d'une autre. Mais prêter au roi le statut d'un époux mystique est une opération mentale qui dépasse une simple manipulation à l'intérieur du droit fondateur des statuts. Il s'agit bien plutôt de la création mythique du droit royal lui-même, d'une cosmogonie de la monarchie légitime, en somme.

Burgundy and the Inalienability of Appanages in the Reign of Louis XI

The death of Charles the Bold in 1477 raised one of the great issues of French constitutional history. Could Charles's daughter and only legitimate and direct heir, Mary, inherit his appanages of Burgundy, Artois, Macon, Auxerre, Bar-sur-Seine, and French Flanders? Mary's defenders claimed that Charles's appanages were actually fiefs which women could inherit. French speaking writers in the Franche-Comte in the sixteenth century and in modern Belgium have upheld this view.1 In contrast, French jurists and historians of the ancien regime have argued that appanages were generically different from fiefs.2 Beginning in the reign of Louis XI, royal jurists theorized that while fiefs were deemed lands alien to the royal domain whose succession was governed by the custom of the particular terre, appanages were grants of the use of lands pertaining to the crown. Since appanage grants were formed from the royal domain, they were held to be subject to the same prohibition that forbade a female heir to the throne of France. Thus, in the 1470s the question of female succession became directly linked to the issue of the inalienability of the royal domain, for the acceptance of a single royal law barring female succession presupposed an acceptance of the idea that lands granted in appanage still remained subject to the

Thomas More as Viewed by Two French Jurists

Thomas More as Viewed by Two French Jurists

The Decline of the French Jurists as Political Theorists, 1660-1789

It is well known that during the reign of Louis XIV patterns of thought in France gradually evolved from the traditional and authoritarian to the rational and speculative, ultimately providing the foundations of the Enlightenment. Especially during the second generation of the reign, thinkers in almost all fields increasingly abandoned their orientation toward the learning and experience of the past and substituted a philosophical approach to knowledge and human affairs. The major elements of this crisis of the European conscience have been widely known since the appearance of the works of Paul Hazard and others. One aspect of this massive intellectual transition, however, has been virtually neglected. That is the decline of the French jurists from their earlier pre-eminence in the field of political thought. This gap in historical scholarship is surprising in view of the importance of political concepts in the ideology and motivation of the age of absolutism, yet little has been done to indicate the jurists' exact position in the political speculation of the period. Since the jurists were traditionally the most important political theorists in France, an analysis of the currents that caused them to forfeit this role to others should elucidate certain im-

Jahrbuch des Offentlichen Rechts der Gegenwart (Neue Folge)

most embarrassing and are most felt as objectionable. In fact, interesting comparisons are made with the laws of the United States, West Germany and Switzerland, and contributions are made by speakers from outside France. They tend to show mainly that the French law is the most stringent on the manufacturer, denying effect to exoneration clauses and admitting liability without any proof of fault, through a presumption practically irrebuttable. Consumer protection is by no means the sole purpose of law. These French jurists are indeed concerned by the drawbacks of this total commitment of the Cour de Cassation to consumer protection, notably the additional cost that results for manufacturers and impairs the competitiveness of French products abroad. The book also contains sections on the liability insurance of manufacturers and on the penal law applicable to them. It includes two drafts by the European Council of an international convention on the matter.

The Contribution of French Jurists to the Humanism of the Renaissance1

How to define humanism as a description of the intellectual activities of the Renaissance is a much vexed question. Whereas Italian humanism was dominated by the professional rhetoricians who imitated classical models and founded classical philology, French humanism, stimulated by the discovery of Greek learning, preoccupied by moral problems, attempted to achieve a fusion of Christian and classical erudition. The interests of the humanists, which included Greek fathers of the church and Byzantine authors as well as the traditional classic writers, were encyclopedic, as in Budé and Jacques Peletier, and philosophic, as in Montaigne and Charron.Although humanists were to be found in all classes of society, from nobles, ecclesiastics, courtiers, professors, and doctors to printers and merchants, the legal profession appears to have had among its members more distinguished humanists than are to be found in any other one group.