The Criminal Jury in England and France in the Age of Revolutions. Popular Justice 1790-1811

In the period immediately after the French Revolution, its architects imported and “copied” the English jury system. This project will develop the first comparative history of the criminal jury in France and England in the immensely illuminating and influential period of innovation and French judicial reform that occurred between 1790 and the Napoleon fall in 1814. It will analyse the objectives, hopes and disappointments of those who adopted the English jury model in Revolutionary France as well as comparing actual jury practices in the two countries. This research is relevant to contemporary Western societies, because the modern judicial systems of many countries developed directly from English and French models created in the late 18th century, and it will therefore make an important contribution to current scholarly debates in political and social science, sociology and criminology.