Parlement

A parlement (French pronunciation: [paʁləmɑ̃]) was a provincial appellate court in the France of the Ancien Régime, i.e. before the French Revolution. In 1789, 13 parlements existed, the most important of which was by far the Parlement of Paris. While English word parliament derives from this French term, parlements were not legislative bodies. They consisted of a dozen or more appellate judges, or about 1,100 judges nationwide. They were the court of final appeal of the judicial system, and typically wielded much power over a wide range of subject matter, particularly taxation. Laws and edicts issued by the Crown were not official in their respective jurisdictions until the parlements gave their assent by publishing them. The members were aristocrats called nobles of the gown who had bought or inherited their offices, and were independent of the King.

From 1770 to 1774 the Lord Chancellor, Maupeou, tried to abolish the Parlement of Paris in order to strengthen the Crown; however, when King Louis XV died in 1774, the parlements were reinstated. The parlements spearheaded the aristocracy's resistance to the absolutism and centralization of the Crown, but they worked primarily for the benefit of their own class, the French nobility. Alfred Cobban argues that the parlements were the chief obstacles to any reform before the Revolution, as well as the most formidable enemies of the French Crown. He concludes that the

"Parlement of Paris, though no more in fact than a small, selfish, proud and venal oligarchy, regarded itself, and was regarded by public opinion, as the guardian of the constitutional liberties of France."

In November 1789, early in the French Revolution, all parlements were suspended, and they were formally abolished in September 1790.

The political institutions of the Parlement in Ancien Régime France developed out of the King's Council (Fr. Conseil du roi, Lat. curia regis), and consequently enjoyed ancient, customary consultative and deliberative prerogatives. In the 13th century, the parlements acquired judicial functions, then the droit de remontrance against the king. The parlement judges were of the opinion that their role included active participation in the legislative process, which brought them into increasing conflict with the ever increasing monarchical absolutism of the Ancien Régime, as the lit de justice evolved during the 16th century from a constitutional forum to a royal weapon, used to force registration of edicts.

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