 Judicial venality in Old Regime France: A rational choice analysisBertrand Crettez, Bruno Deffains, Olivier Musy and Ronan Tallec Journal of Comparative Economics, 2025, vol. 53, issue 3, 704-726 Abstract: Venality, i.e., the sale of public positions, was widely used in the judicial sector in France between the 16th and 18th centuries. In a venal system, litigants finance the justice system by paying the judges directly. In France, moreover, the right to judge was sold by the ruler, who indirectly levied part of the legal costs. Here, instead of the state funding justice, justice funds the state. The cost to the King was a loss of control over the judiciary and biased legal decisions. We develop a model of judicial venality and build on this model to provide an analytical narrative of the rise and decline of judicial venality in Old Regime France. Historically, judicial venality enhanced legal capacity whereas the French kings faced with limited opportunities to raise taxes and to borrow. Lack of control over the judiciary, however, led to overly costly and time-consuming trials, resulting in its final demise during the 1789 Revolution. Keywords: Comparative legal history; Fee-based justice; France; Judicial bias; Judicial incentives; Judicial venality; Law and economics; Legal design; Litigation; Pre-revolutionary France (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:53:y:2025:i:3:p:704-726 DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2025.05.005 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Comparative Economics is currently edited by D. Berkowitz and G. Roland More articles in Journal of Comparative Economics from Elsevier |
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