The French revolution was particularly unkind to the magistrates of the Parlement of Paris. Their institution was abolished in 1790, many of its members perished in the Terror, and to add insult to injury historians ever since have accused them of either causing or encouraging the collapse of monarchical authority in 1789. That this should be the case is not especially remarkable because the opposition of the Parlement to the crown after 1750 remains central to the debate about the origins of the French revolution. Having only recently been exonerated from the charge of leading an aristocratic reaction, the magistrates are now in danger of being convicted of contributing to the ideologies and discourse that undermined the ancien régime. The idea of noble judges in the vanguard of the revolution is a curious one, but there is no doubt that from 1750 until 1771 when chancellor de Maupeou's revolution destroyed the Parlement and exiled its members, Louis XV faced serious resistance from the court. The desire to know more about the causes of that opposition was the starting place for this work, and after a decade spent studying the parlementaires I am not sure to have found the answer. Instead, the following offers an interpretation of how judicial politics functioned in eighteenth-century France, the problems of government and the role of the Parlement. It is, I hope, less a study of the origins of the French revolution, than of politics under the ancien régime.

While preparing this book and the doctoral dissertation upon which it is based, I have accumulated many debts to both individuals and institutions.