This research, extensively based on unpublished manuscript sources, deals with the topic of the origins of the clash between the political power and the judiciary within a perspective of institutional history. In eighteenth-century France, from the death of Louis XIV to the Revolution, the traditional combat between the crown and the judiciary was revived after the long break the reign of the sun king. The battle marked the whole life of the state and its major institutions, accelerating the cultural and political debate, and involving broad sections of civil society and religious and ecclesiastical world. All major issues, both theoretical and practical, of the ancien régime emerge from the analysis of this conflict: from the actual working of the absolutist apparatus to the concept of "constitution", not at all incompatible with the system of absolute monarchy legitimized by divine right. To the vast majority of the protagonists of the political and institutional life, who had a legal training, the "constitutional" doctrine was conceived and developed within the absolute state; it was not alternative to it. The absolutist system was more than necessary for the patriarchal mediation of the judiciary. The "fundamental laws of the kingdom" and all other "ordinary" laws enclosed a set of principles aimed at ensuring rights of the subjects that were unalterable, inalienable and imprescriptible. Such rights - the lawyers argued - could be defended only through legal institutions. Hence the priority value assigned to the judiciary, primarily to the “Parlements”, considered "sovereign courts," and their officials. Among them, those invested with the judicial functions were called “robins” for the symbolic value assumed by the robe, worn and shown off as a symbol of their status. The study of the "ideology" of the “robins”, i.e. the fundamental matrix of their thinking, their culture, their doctrines, allows us to examine the most significant phenomena of that important period in the history of the state and helps to explain the deep meaning of the political action led by the most important socioinstitutional "body" then existing. The robins were the chief protagonists of a dialectic that was not only - as has been argued - the symptom of a particular moment of crisis in the system, but the diarchic essential condition of the absolute state that emerges from the metaphor of the “king's two bodies”. It thus casts light on the origin of a fundamental problem that returns endemically also in contemporary society and states.

L’ideologia dei robins nella Francia dei lumi – Costituzionalismo e assolutismo nell’esperienza politico-istituzionale della magistratura di antico regime (1715-1788), ESI, Napoli 2003

DI DONATO Francesco
2003-01-01

Abstract

This research, extensively based on unpublished manuscript sources, deals with the topic of the origins of the clash between the political power and the judiciary within a perspective of institutional history. In eighteenth-century France, from the death of Louis XIV to the Revolution, the traditional combat between the crown and the judiciary was revived after the long break the reign of the sun king. The battle marked the whole life of the state and its major institutions, accelerating the cultural and political debate, and involving broad sections of civil society and religious and ecclesiastical world. All major issues, both theoretical and practical, of the ancien régime emerge from the analysis of this conflict: from the actual working of the absolutist apparatus to the concept of "constitution", not at all incompatible with the system of absolute monarchy legitimized by divine right. To the vast majority of the protagonists of the political and institutional life, who had a legal training, the "constitutional" doctrine was conceived and developed within the absolute state; it was not alternative to it. The absolutist system was more than necessary for the patriarchal mediation of the judiciary. The "fundamental laws of the kingdom" and all other "ordinary" laws enclosed a set of principles aimed at ensuring rights of the subjects that were unalterable, inalienable and imprescriptible. Such rights - the lawyers argued - could be defended only through legal institutions. Hence the priority value assigned to the judiciary, primarily to the “Parlements”, considered "sovereign courts," and their officials. Among them, those invested with the judicial functions were called “robins” for the symbolic value assumed by the robe, worn and shown off as a symbol of their status. The study of the "ideology" of the “robins”, i.e. the fundamental matrix of their thinking, their culture, their doctrines, allows us to examine the most significant phenomena of that important period in the history of the state and helps to explain the deep meaning of the political action led by the most important socioinstitutional "body" then existing. The robins were the chief protagonists of a dialectic that was not only - as has been argued - the symptom of a particular moment of crisis in the system, but the diarchic essential condition of the absolute state that emerges from the metaphor of the “king's two bodies”. It thus casts light on the origin of a fundamental problem that returns endemically also in contemporary society and states.
2003
88-495-0755-0
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11386/4741700
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