Definition
In French law, a sitting or session of a public body, assembly, or deliberative body. The term is the French word for "session" and appears in translated French legal materials and civilian-tradition sources to describe a formal meeting of a court, legislature, or official body — equivalent to the English legal term "session" or "sitting."
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Alternative spelling of séance — a meeting at which people attempt to make contact with the dead, typically through a medium.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A session, as of some public body; especially, a meeting of spiritualists to receive spirit communication, so called."
The gap matters for legal research. By 1913, Webster already treats the spiritualist meaning as the primary popular association, relegating the original sense of "session of a public body" to secondary status. In legal materials, the word never carried the spiritualist meaning — it was always purely procedural. Researchers reading nineteenth-century Louisiana notarial acts, French court records, or civil law commentaries should not allow the dominant modern popular meaning to create confusion about what the document is actually describing.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in Louisiana law, civil law comparative materials, or translated French legal texts will encounter this term in its strictly procedural sense. It appears most naturally in nineteenth-century American legal sources that drew heavily on French civil law, particularly in contexts involving notarial records, legislative proceedings, or judicial sessions under French or Spanish colonial governance. Do not mistake the term for a substantive legal concept — it is purely descriptive of a formal meeting or sitting.
The principal research trap is anachronism: a modern researcher scanning historical Louisiana or Quebec legal records, French-language court documents, or Napoleonic Code commentaries may encounter "séance" or "seance" and misread it through the lens of its modern popular meaning. In those sources, it means nothing more than "session" and carries no association with spiritualism or the occult.
The term has essentially no independent doctrinal weight. It does not appear in statutes as a term of art, nor does it define rights or obligations. Its value to researchers is purely translational — understanding what the word signals in a French-language or French-derived legal document.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary give nearly identical entries: "In French law. A session; as of some public body." The second edition adds only a footnote reference. There is no meaningful divergence between the two editions, and neither source develops the term beyond this bare gloss. The brevity is appropriate — the term carries no doctrinal content and requires no elaboration in the common law tradition.
Neither edition addresses the term's appearance in Louisiana civil law materials specifically, nor do they flag the potential for confusion with the term's growing popular meaning in spiritualist contexts, which was already well established by the time Black's second edition was published in 1910. Webster's 1913 captures both meanings simultaneously, which suggests the bifurcation was contemporaneous with the height of the term's use in American legal sources.