michel de l’hôpital & christophe de thou conflicts presented unique opportunities and challenges to both the king and his judges. The king attempted to assure the social cohesion of the judicial corps in distinction from the traditional nobility and the urban groups. The crown appropriated the ideal of “perfect” judges as it granted the royal monarchy irreproachable superiority and legitimacy.143 At the same time, the king tried to stem the growing esprit de clan and the corporatist culture of vested privileges at the law courts. He sold offices to raise money but was never willing to recognize the independence of judges that could compromise his authority. The judges, on their part, relied on the edifice of royal power that offered them privileges and status. When the royal government tried to regulate their power, it prompted an exaggerated assertion of the court’s constitutional rights. Apart from the lofty principles of fundamental law and the common good, it was only natural that the judges’ reactions to royal policy were affected by the desire to guard their prerogatives and protect their investment.144 Broadly considered, L’Hôpital’s and de Thou’s positions represented two contending viewpoints – constitutional convictions – that remain very much at the heart of modern debates. The arguments over judicial tenure, for example, have clear implications to the current times. Today a strong case can be made for unintimidated justice, and there is general consensus in favor of the guarantee of judicial tenure. On the other hand, public concerns about the seemingly ever-expanding interpretive power of the judges –the growing trend of the judicialization of politics –appear to have equally critical antecedents in the sixteenth century. According toDonald Kelley, public outrage against the judges’ equity power in early modern France “points to more than suspicion and hatred of lawyers” and it “suggested a larger distrust of the devices and engines of modern ‘justice.’”145 The sixteenth-century wrangling over the law court’s claim of power to interpret law, equivocating and sometimes even ignoring the clear intent of the legislator, has ample modern reverberations. 143 Kaiser, Colin 1982 p. 15. 144 Saint Bonnet, François 2007. 145 Kelley, Donald R. 1993 p. 160. 166
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