The judicial system of seventeenth-century France is often qualified as vitiated and inefficient. Actually, truth and equity are virtually absent from the court. In these conditions, why would one appeal to institutional justice? Montpellier notables use the judicial system to exert pressure on a debtor, to redress the internal familial order, to sidestep customary practices, to take revenge, to cause harm. Indeed, the question of law is rarely something other than a pretext, and it is precisely because it is vitiated that the judicial system can be used in that way. The analysis of the procedural practices and of the judicial system as they are---instead of as they should be---allows us to penetrate the fascinating universe of social, familial and financial practices. Furthermore, the emphasis on the civil procedures reveals an original perspective which goes beyond the points of view of notarial and criminal archives usually preferred by historiography. The petty Montpellier notables studied here are steering a delicate course between customs, laws and procedures. Far from suffering the imperfections of the judicial system, they are adopting them, appropriating and using them as means of meeting their own objectives. The recourse to justice is similar to a game of chess: the judicial system is the chessboard, its defects are the chess pieces and the jousts, always fought inside the same frameworks and with the same weapons, are opposing various opponents displaying different strategies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.84487 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Carrier, Isabelle |
| Contributors | Boulle, Pierre (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | French |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of History.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002083303, proquestno: AAINQ98220, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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