The Parliament of Paris and the Making of the Law at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century
Le Parlement de Paris et la "fabrique" de la loi dans la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle
Résumé
The Parlement of Paris is undoubtedly the first, the most important and most influential Court of Law of the Kingdom of France, from the triple point of view of politics, judicial action and legal evolution. The creation of provincial courts from the second half of the Fifteenth Century merely confirmed, for the modern period (16-18th centuries), its essential primacy while at the same time relieving the enormous task of a court whose jurisdiction was as extensive as the royal domain, and as "sovereign" as the king’s one. The first part of my presentation will therefore consist in depicting the Parlement of Paris as it operates at the top of its institutional development, from totally unpublished sources untapped until now, from the Clerk of Parliament (1700- 1745). Secondly, it will be necessary to demonstrate, particularly from the archives of the King's general Prosecutor, how the Parisian Parliament served to bring about a subtle alchemy in the progress of criminal Law, probably since 1670, and especially since the ministry of the chancellor d’Aguesseau (1717). A collaboration between the court and the King's Council is established which allows a real and mutual influence of the practice of criminal Justice in the Parliament on the evolution of the conception of the criminal Law, the regularization of procedures and the search for some form of criminal "codification" before the letter. Finally, the purpose will devote most of its development to this "crucible" Parliament of the criminal Law.