Autore
Garneau, Jean-Philippe

Titolo
The lawyers, the courtroom and the public sphere. Defending the French law tradition in British Quebec at the turn of the nineteenth century
Periodico
Quaderni storici
Anno: 2012 - Volume: 141 - Fascicolo: 3 - Pagina iniziale: 797 - Pagina finale: 824

As a former French colony ceded to the British in 1763, Quebec inheritedtwo legal traditions (civil law and Common law). While English criminallaw was introduced in 1764, the core of French civil law was reaffirmedin 1774. Implementing such a hybrid regime was not an easy task consideringthe context: a British colony where the majority of the population wasof French origin (the French Canadians or, as they were referred to at thetime, simply the Canadians). French-Canadian elites soon began to loudlydenounce British judges for what they saw as an Anglicization of French civillaw. But what was really going on in the colony's civil courts? How exactlywere lawyers, who had to plead on a day-to-day basis before British judges,defending French law tradition? And, most importantly, to what extent didcourt cases and lawyers' arguments feed debates that were raging in the colonialpublic sphere at the same time? My research has revealed a simple butsignificant fact: by the beginning of the 19th century, legal practitioners hadabandoned written proceedings in favour of oral submissions as the primevehicle of persuasion in matters of law, at a time when the dissemination oflegal debates still remained very limited within the colony. This situation undoubtedlyexplains, at least partly, the relative virulence of French-Canadianopposition in the political arena, especially in the Legislative Assembly. Moreeasily relayed by the colony's fledgling press, oral arguments made in thecourtroom found their way into the colonial public sphere. However, triallawyers had very little to do with the public dissemination of the details ofcourt cases, quite unlike the situation in pre-Revolutionary France or evenliberal England. Through this investigation of defence practices and theirrelationship to the public sphere, this article seeks to contribute to a fieldthat has already highlighted the role of lawyers and justice in the social andpolitical activism of the same period.



SICI: 0301-6307(2012)141:3<797:TLTCAT>2.0.ZU;2-
Testo completo: http://www.mulino.it/download/article/10.1408/38810
Testo completo alternativo: http://www.mulino.it/doi/10.1408/38810

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