The People's Justice: Revolutionary Law and the Founding of the French Republic - Hardcover

$75.60

The People's Justice: Revolutionary Law and the Founding of the French Republic - Hardcover

Name: The People's Justice: Revolutionary Law and the Founding of the French Republic - Hardcover
Brand: BooksCloud
SKU: 9780691274843
Price: 75.60 USD
Availability: InStock

by Carla Hesse

$75.60

Book Overview

Report copyright infringement

by Carla Hesse (Author)

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.

Author Biography

Carla Hesse is the Peder Sather Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern (Princeton) and Publishing and Cultural Politics in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1810.

Number of Pages: 336

Dimensions: 0.88 x 9.21 x 6.14 IN

Publication Date: July 28, 2026

ISBN	9780691274843
Author	Carla Hesse
Publisher	Princeton University Press
Genre	History
Format	Hardcover
Published	July 2026
Language	ENG- English
Pages	336
Weight	1.0 lb
Target Audience	Adults
Print Size	Standard Print