Amédée Girod de l'Ain

Amédée Girod de l'Ain
Sketch from Biographie nouvelle des contemporains, 1822
Born	(1781-10-18)18 October 1781 Gex, Ain, France
Died	27 December 1847(1847-12-27) (aged 66) Paris, France
Nationality	French
Occupation	Lawyer, politician
Known for	Minister of Public Education and Religious Affairs

Louis Gaspard Amédée baron Girod de l'Ain (18 October 1781 – 27 December 1847) was a French lawyer and politician who became Minister of Public Education and Religious Affairs in 1832.

Louis Gaspard Amédée baron Girod de l'Ain was born in Gex, Ain, on 18 October 1781. His father was Baron Jean-Louis Girod (1753-1839). His father had been appointed mayor of Gex in 1780 by Louis XVI of France. His mother was dame Louise-Claudine-Armande Fabry. He was the oldest of four sons.

Amédée Girod de l'Ain studied law, and pleaded his first case at the age of seventeen in the Court of Cassation. He practiced as a lawyer until 1806, when he was appointed deputy imperial prosecutor in Turin. In 1807 he became imperial prosecutor in Alexandria. In 1809 he was made Attorney General to the Court of Appeal of Lyon, and in 1810 the auditor of the Council of State. He was appointed advocate-general at the imperial court of Paris in 1811, and held this position when the First French Empire collapsed in 1814.

Girod de l'Ain was among those whose defection hastened the fall of Napoleon. He quickly recognized the House of Bourbon and was able to retain his office during the first Bourbon Restoration. However, when Napoleon returned during the Hundred Days of 1815, he accepted the position of President of the Court of First Instance of the Seine. He was elected on 14 May 1815 to represent the arrondissement of Gex in the Chamber of Deputies, and was a zealous supporter of the imperial cause. Around this time he married Mlle Sivard de Beaulieu, grandniece of the prince Lebrun, Duke of Plaisance.

After the second Bourbon Restoration in 1815 Amédée Girod de l'Ain was excluded from the judiciary. He temporarily returned to private life. He gave asylum in his house to General Antoine Drouot, and undertook the general's defense before the council of war. On 6 April 1816 the general was acquitted by a simple majority of four votes out of seven. Girod de l'Ain was restored to the judiciary and became a counselor at the court of Paris in 1819. In that position he was a member of a commission to prepare a proposed law for jury trials. He presided in turn over the courts of Seine and of Versailles.