PARQUET - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

PARQUETAuthored

The Law Mind • 1005 words

Definition

A French law term with two distinct legal meanings:

1. (Public law / Criminal procedure) The body of magistrates responsible for conducting proceedings in criminal cases and misdemeanors. In the French legal system, the parquet comprises the public prosecutors — the *ministère public* — who act on behalf of the state in criminal matters. These officials initiate prosecutions, supervise investigations, and represent public interests before the courts. The parquet is institutionally distinct from the bench (the sitting judges) and operates under a hierarchical structure within the Ministry of Justice.

2. (Commercial / Exchange law) The railed or enclosed area within a *bourse* (stock exchange) reserved for authorized brokers — the *agents de change* — who conduct official securities transactions. Only privileged brokers were permitted within the parquet; transactions executed there carried the status of official market dealings.

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Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A wooden floor made of tiles or veneers arranged in a decorative geometric pattern; also the lower floor of a theatre between the orchestra and the parquet circle; in some European countries, the prosecutorial branch of government.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A body of seats on the floor of a music hall or theater nearest the orchestra; commonly applied to the whole lower floor of a theater from the orchestra to the dress circle; also parquetry (decorative woodwork flooring).

The gap here is significant. English-language readers will most readily associate "parquet" with flooring or theatre seating — the architectural sense entirely dominates ordinary usage. The legal meanings are French institutional concepts that never naturalized into Anglo-American common law. A researcher encountering "parquet" in an English legal source is almost certainly reading a term of art from French law, not a reference to floors or auditoriums.

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Common Confusion

The two legal senses of parquet — the prosecutorial body and the exchange trading floor — share only etymology, not function. Bouvier's definition captures only the prosecutorial meaning; Black's (both editions) includes both. A researcher relying solely on Bouvier risks missing the commercial exchange sense entirely, which matters when the source text concerns French financial or securities law rather than criminal procedure.

Parquet should not be confused with *parquet de la Cour* or related compound terms that may appear in French legal texts referring to specific prosecutorial offices attached to particular courts. The unmodified term generally refers to the institution collectively.

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Recognized Forms

/ SUBTYPES

The prosecutorial parquet in French law operates at different levels of the court hierarchy. The *parquet général* is attached to courts of appeal and is headed by a *procureur général*. The *parquet* at the trial court level (*tribunal correctionnel* or *tribunal judiciaire*) is headed by a *procureur de la République*. These distinctions appear in translated French legal texts and international comparative law sources and may require attention when the corpus document specifies a particular court level.

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Why It Matters in Research

This term presents a classic false-friend trap for researchers working with Anglo-American sources that quote, translate, or discuss French law. Several cautions apply:

**Corpus coverage is thin and uneven.** The historical dictionaries treat parquet as a French law curiosity — briefly defined and quickly passed over. Neither Black's edition expands beyond two sentences. Bouvier omits the exchange meaning entirely. Any Law Mind corpus document that uses parquet in an analytical or substantive way is almost certainly drawing directly from French sources or from comparative law scholarship, not from domestic Anglo-American doctrine.

**Chronological sensitivity.** The structure of the French parquet — and the institution of the *agents de change* at the bourse — has evolved considerably since the nineteenth century when these dictionary definitions were fixed. The bourse parquet in particular became obsolete as French securities markets modernized; the *agents de change* monopoly was abolished in 1988. Researchers using sources from different periods must be alert to institutional changes that the historical dictionaries do not reflect.

**Prosecutorial independence.** The French parquet's relationship to the executive branch has been a persistent subject of legal and political debate in France, quite unlike the structural independence expected of prosecutors in common law systems. Sources discussing parquet independence or hierarchy will not translate cleanly into Anglo-American prosecutorial concepts.

**Exchange law research.** For researchers working on comparative securities law, financial regulation history, or the history of European exchanges, the bourse meaning of parquet connects to a distinct body of French commercial law that the standard Anglo-American legal dictionaries do not index.

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Historical Dictionary Support

Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) gives identical two-sentence definitions covering both meanings, which suggests the second edition did not revisit the term with any fresh analysis. Bouvier, characteristically attentive to civil law concepts, captures only the prosecutorial meaning and moves immediately to the adjacent entry on parricide — indicating the term received minimal editorial attention. No historical dictionary in the Law Mind collection provides institutional context, procedural detail, or any sense of how the parquet functioned within the broader French legal architecture.

The absence of depth across all three sources is itself instructive: parquet was treated as a translation gloss, not as a working legal concept for Anglo-American practitioners. Researchers needing substantive treatment of either meaning will need to move beyond these dictionary sources to French legal texts, comparative law treatises, or specialized scholarship on European financial history.

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Jurisdictional Note

Parquet as a legal institution is specific to France and civil law systems influenced by the French model, including Belgium, Luxembourg, and historically several other jurisdictions. It has no direct equivalent in Anglo-American common law. The term occasionally appears in English-language international law materials, mutual legal assistance treaty contexts, and comparative criminal procedure scholarship, where it is typically left in French or rendered as "public prosecutor's office."

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PARQUETmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

In French law. 1. The magistrates who are charged with the con- duct of proceedings in criminal cases and mis- demeanors. 2. That part of the bourse which is reserved for stock-brokers.

PARQUETmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

In French law. 1. The magistrates who are charged with the conduct of proceedings in criminal cases and misdemeanors. 2. That part of the bourse which is reserved for stock-brokers.

PARQUETmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

In French Law. The magistrates who are charged with the con- duct of proceedings in criminal cases and misdemeanors. PARRICIDE (from Lat. pater, father, caedere to slay). In the Civil Law. One who murders his father. One who murders his mother, his brother, his sister, or his children. Merlin. Rep. Parricide; Dig. 48. 9. 1. 3, 4. This offence is defined almost in the same words in the penal code of China. Penal Laws of China, b. 1, 5. 2, § 4. The criminal was punished by being scourged, and afterwards sewed in a sort of sack, with a dog, a cock, a viper, and an ape, and then thrown into the sea or into a river; or, if there were no water, he was thrown in this manner to wild beasts. Dig. 48. 9. 9; Code 9, 17. 1. 1. 4, 18, 6; Brown, Civ. Law 423. By the laws of France, parricide is the crime of him who murders his father or mother, whether they be the legitimate, natural, or adopted parents of the individual, or the murder of any other legiti- mate ascendant. Code Penal, art. 297. This crime was there punished by the criminal's being taken to the place of execution without any other gar- ment than his shirt, barefooted, and with his head covered with a black veil. He was then exposed on the scaffold, while an officer of the court read his sentence to the spectators; his right hand was then cut off, and he was immediately put to death. Id. art. 18. The common law does not define this crime, and makes no difference between its punishment and the punishment of murder 1 Hale, Pl. Cr. 380; Prin. Penal Law, c. 18, $ 8, p. 243; Dalloz, Dict. Homicide, § 3. PARS ENITIA (Lat.). In Old English Law. The share of the eldest daughter where lands were parted between daugh- ters by lot, she having her first choice after the division of the inheritance. Co. Litt. 166 b; Glanv. lib. 7, c. 3; Fleta, lib. 5, c. 10, § In divisionem. PARS RATIONABILIS (Lat. reason- able part). That part of a man's goods which the law gave to his wife and children. 2 Bla. Com. 492; Magn. Chart.; 9 Hen. III. c. 18; 2 Steph. Com., 11th ed. 194. See

PARQUETn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

A body of seats on the floor of a music hall or theater nearest the orchestra; but commonly applied to the whole lower floor of a theater, from the orchestra to the dress circle; the pit. Same as Parquetry.

parquetnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

A wooden floor made of wooden tiles or veneers arranged in a decorative geometrical pattern. | The part of a theatre between the orchestra and the parquet circle. | In some European countries, the branch of the administrative government that handles prosecutions; a procuratorate. | In some European bourses or stock exchanges, the railed-in space within which the agents de change, or privileged brokers, conduct business; also, the business conducted by them, distinguished from the coulisse, or outside market.

parquetverb

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

To lay or fit such a floor.

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