Law of Suspects

The Law of Suspects (French: Loi des suspects) was a decree passed by the Committee of Public Safety on 17 September 1793, during the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution. It marked a significant weakening of individual freedoms that led to "revolutionary paranoia" that swept the nation.

With the Law of Suspects, anyone at all was deemed suspicious "who, by their conduct or their relationships, either by their words or writings, have been partisans of tyranny or federalism and enemies of freedom, those whose [actions] cannot justify, in the manner prescribed by the decree of 21 March, their financial means and remunerations from their civic duties; those to whom have been denied citizenship certificates, removed by public officials or suspended from their functions by the National Convention or its commissioners and have not been reinstated; those former nobles, all the husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, son or daughters, brothers or sisters, and agents of émigrés, who have not consistently demonstrated their commitment to the Revolution, those who emigrated from the interval between 1 July 1789 and its release between 30–8 March 1792, even though they returned to France within the time prescribed by such order or earlier."

The law ordered the arrest of all avowed enemies and likely enemies of the Revolution, which included nobles, relatives of émigrés, officials removed from office, officers suspected of treason, and hoarders of goods. The following year, it was expanded and became more strict. Implementation of the law and arrests were entrusted to oversight committees, and not to the legal authorities. It also introduced the maxim that subjects had to prove their innocence, which was later extended by the Law of 22 Prairial.

The Law of Suspects, actually a decree rather than a law, was based on a proposal by Philippe-Antoine Merlin de Douai and Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, approved by the National Convention of the French First Republic. It supplemented an earlier law of 10 March 1793, which created the revolutionary tribunals but contained a much narrower definition of suspects.

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