Abstract
While in exile in London and then in Algiers, the French Government led by General de Gaulle discussed the question of legal purges to be organized in the liberated territories. Professional purges were one of the building blocks of the multiple-stage process known generally as the épuration. This chapter focuses on a very peculiar sort of épuration: the professional purge of lawyers. It aims to address such professional processes from a sociological perspective while paying attention to the legal dimension. This professional case is a concrete example of the effects of political transitions in the social fabric.
Liora Israël is maîtresse de conférences of sociology at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales and assistant director of the Centre Maurice Halbwachs, Paris (CNRS/ENS/EHESS).
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Notes
- 1.
Revel 1996.
- 2.
Baruch 2003.
- 3.
Bancaud and Rousso 2001.
- 4.
Sapiro 1997.
- 5.
Published as: Israël 2005a.
- 6.
de Tocqueville 2004.
- 7.
See notably Le Béguec 2003.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
For a short synthesis of this broad collective enterprise, see Scheingold and Sarat 2004.
- 11.
Israël 2009.
- 12.
The debates over the political identity of French lawyers is somehow polluted by the double meaning of “liberal.” Whereas Lucien Karpik, for example, refers to liberalism in the eighteenth century (or French) sense of the term, he sometimes has been (wrongly) criticized in the name of the contemporary American sense of the term (approximating “leftist”). This misunderstanding can be identified in Abel’s comments in this article: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/lawbooks/revnov98.htm#Abel. Abel 1998. In this chapter, I refer to liberalism in the French sense of the term.
- 13.
Kaplan 2000.
- 14.
For an historical analysis of French lawyering using the cause lawyering framework, see Israël 2005b.
- 15.
Association Française pour l’Histoire de la Justice 1993.
- 16.
Cf. Karpik 1999.
- 17.
In French urban areas, lawyers register in the local barreau (bar) attached to appeals court. Their elected leader, the bâtonnier, is responsible for maintaining ethical standards of the local bar. Members of the Conseil de l’ordre (bar council) are elected and are charged with maintaining professional standards and rules—NdT.
- 18.
Dossier “Barreaux Afrique du Nord Épuration 43-44 Alger,” Archives Nationales BB 30 1738. Before the war, 559 lawyers were registered in colonial Algeria; 130 Jewish lawyers were expulsed from the profession and additional lawyers migrated from the continent during the war.
- 19.
A circulaire delineates how a new law, decree, or ordinance is to be implemented; an ordonnance had the legislative value of a decree-law during this period of reestablishing the French republic—NdT.
- 20.
Simonin 2008.
- 21.
Letters of Fernand Payen to the Chancellery, Archives du Ministère de la Justice, C6722.
- 22.
Declaration of the “Groupement Patriotique Judiciaire du Sud Est,” joined to the deliberation of October 2, 1944, Registre des délibérations du Conseil de l’Ordre des Avocats de Marseille, Archives du Conseil de l’Ordre.
- 23.
Dossier “Épuration des avocats,” Archives de la Ville de Paris, 1320 W 134–135. Ninety-three individual files have been examined.
- 24.
Dossier “Metz,” Dossier Épuration, Dossiers ressorts des Cours d’Appel, Archives du Ministère de la Justice, C6722.
- 25.
Bancaud and Baruch 2003, pp. 480–512.
- 26.
The Parisian Bar did not give me access to their official records, so I cannot estimate how many lawyers were reintegrated in total.
- 27.
Badinter 1996.
- 28.
Ellmann 1995, pp. 339–348.
- 29.
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Israël, L. (2014). The Defense in the Dock: Professional Purges of French Lawyers After the Second World War. In: Israël, L., Mouralis, G. (eds) Dealing with Wars and Dictatorships. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-6704-930-6_10
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