The Judge, the Expert and the Arbitrator. The Strange Case of the Paris Court of Commerce (ca. 1800-ca. 1880)

Claire Lemercier (1)

1 IHMC - Institut d'histoire moderne et contemporaine

This chapter deals with expertise in the field of trade and labour disputes, mainly in 19th-century Paris – but with comparative references to other times and places. The history of legal expertise in France has been recently considered, but most historians have focused on medical/psychological expertise and, in some cases, graphology, accounting or chemical analysis. In trade and labour disputes, another kind of expert however played a key role, namely the expert of a precise branche or métier (trade, profession, sector... this problem of defining an area of expertise is at the heart of the chapter). The French case (and especially the Parisian case, because of the variety of trades involved) is here of special theoretical and empirical interest, because of two elements of context related to wider political issues.

Mots clés: expertise

Domaines: Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences; Histoire

Claire Lemercier. The Judge, the Expert and the Arbitrator. The Strange Case of the Paris Court of Commerce (ca. 1800-ca. 1880). 2006. ⟨halshs-00106186⟩