French legal science in the 17th and 18th centuries
to the limits of the theory of law
pp. 43-67
in: Enrico Pattaro, Damiano Canale, Hasso Hofmann, Patrick Riley (eds), A treatise of legal philosophy and general jurisprudence 9-10, Berlin, Springer, 2009Abstract
Before being able to discuss French legal science during the last two centuries of the Ancien Régime, it is necessary to provide a little background information. There is no doubt that a French legal order, that is to say a number of rules of law applied in the territory of the kingdom of France, existed well before the French Revolution. This legal order, like all those of the same period, came from different sources of law, and some were only administered in certain areas of the kingdom. Since the Middle Ages, the kings of France had allowed rules of law, which had to do with customary law or Roman law, to take roots while carefully developing from the thirteenth century onwards a legislation which came directly from the king.