The People’s Justice

Revolutionary Law and the Founding of the French Republic

Carla Hesse

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9780691274867
  9780691274843
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691288536
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

A major new interpretation of the French Revolution that brings to life the criminal tribunals at the heart of the Republic’s political culture

In The People’s Justice, Carla Hesse offers a sweeping reappraisal of political violence in the French Revolution. From Charles Dickens to Hannah Arendt, the Revolution of 1789–1799 in France has been depicted as the bloodiest of the eighteenth-century democratic revolutions. Through extensive new archival research, Hesse shows that, to the contrary, what set the French Revolution apart was neither the scale nor the intensity of its violence but rather the ubiquity of its political tribunals and the use of novel forms of criminal law and procedure as a means of adjudicating political conflict.

More than 5,000 political trials were prosecuted by the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris alone, and, with an acquittal rate of more than 50 percent, these were neither perfunctory nor foregone in their outcomes. They had a repressive function, to be sure, but more importantly, they played a critical role in founding a republic in France and in shaping its social and political norms. Through jury deliberation, public witnessing, and media coverage, these political trials legitimated a republic and the revolutionary struggle that brought it into being. They were animated less by class warfare, factional hatreds, or utopian ideology than by a patriotic, albeit tragic, effort to hold fellow citizens accountable. Over the course of the last two centuries, France, of course, has successfully established itself as a constitutional regime, but this constitutional tradition is still rooted in and haunted by its revolutionary past. Since 1793, the French Republic has, to some extent or another, kept itself alive by keeping itself perpetually on trial.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• Schematic Summary of the French Revolution
• Introduction: Constitution and Revolution
• Chapter 1. Tribunals (À la lanterne)
• Chapter 2. Urgent Decrees (Décrets d’urgence)
• Chapter 3. The Public Prosecutor (Accusateur public)
• Chapter 4. Suspicion (Loi des suspects)
• Chapter 5. Indictments (Actes d’accusation)
• Chapter 6. Seized Letters (Lettres saisies)
• Chapter 7. Professions of Innocence (Fidèles récits)
• Chapter 8. Inner Conviction (Conviction intime)
• Chapter 9. Trials (Justice révolutionnaire)
• Conclusion: The Law on Trial
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix A: Trials and Convictions
• Appendix B: Paris Tribunal Trial Phases
• Appendix C: Charges Against Defendants in the Paris Revolutionary Tribunal
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index