TRIBUNAUX - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

TRIBUNAUXAuthored

The Law Mind • 858 words

Definition

Tribunaux is the French plural of tribunal, denoting courts or judicial bodies. In legal usage derived from French civil law tradition, the term refers collectively to the various courts constituting a judicial system, or more specifically to the inferior or specialized courts of first instance that adjudicate disputes in civil law jurisdictions. The word appears in English-language legal sources primarily in three contexts: (1) historical references to French courts operating under the ancien régime or the Napoleonic reorganization of the judiciary; (2) legal materials from Quebec, Louisiana, and other jurisdictions whose private law descends from French civil law; and (3) comparative law scholarship describing the structure of continental European court systems.

In French civil procedure, the tribunaux judiciaires (formerly tribunaux de grande instance) are the general civil courts of first instance at the departmental level, while the tribunaux de commerce handle commercial disputes and the tribunaux administratifs constitute the first tier of the separate administrative court system. The plural form signals that the reference is to a category or class of courts rather than to any single institution.

Common Confusion

English-language researchers sometimes treat tribunaux and tribunal as interchangeable when encountered in historical sources. They are not. Tribunal (singular) in English has developed an independent life as a term for any adjudicative body — including administrative panels, arbitral bodies, and military courts — that is broader and looser than the French tribunaux, which retains a more precise structural meaning tied to a specific tier or type of court within a defined judicial hierarchy. A "tribunal" in modern English usage may be entirely informal or statutory in origin; tribunaux in French legal tradition implies a court established and positioned within a formal, codified judicial architecture.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers encounter tribunaux most often in three situations, each carrying its own trap.

First, in historical sources covering pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary France, the term appears amid significant institutional instability. The Revolutionaries abolished the parlements and reorganized the judiciary repeatedly between 1789 and the Napoleonic consolidation. A reference to tribunaux in a source dated between 1789 and 1810 may describe courts that existed briefly, were renamed, or were superseded within years. Dating the source precisely is essential before drawing structural inferences.

Second, in Louisiana and Quebec legal materials, tribunaux appears in French-language versions of statutes, codes, and judgments that may also have official English translations. When the French and English versions diverge — as they occasionally do in Quebec bilingual legislation — the French term carries interpretive weight and the English "court" or "tribunal" may not capture the precise institutional reference. Researchers working in these jurisdictions should check both language versions of any operative text.

Third, in Rapalje & Lawrence and similar nineteenth-century Anglo-American law dictionaries, French legal terms including tribunaux appear in discussions of comparative civil procedure, often to illustrate the contrast between common law trial practice and continental methods. The Rapalje & Lawrence entry in this corpus addresses trial procedure and the roles of plaintiff and defendant — the kind of procedural framework within which tribunaux operated in civil law systems. Researchers using those comparative passages should be cautious: nineteenth-century English-language descriptions of French courts were frequently impressionistic, and the institutional landscape they described had already been reformed multiple times by the date of publication.

The term does not appear in standard common law dictionaries (Black's, Bouvier's, Burrill's) as a primary entry, which itself signals something: it is a term of art for civil law and comparative law research, not part of the indigenous Anglo-American legal vocabulary. Its presence in an English-language source is almost always a marker that the source is engaging with French, Quebecois, or Louisiana law, or with civilian jurisprudence more broadly.

Historical Dictionary Support

Rapalje & Lawrence does not provide a standalone entry for tribunaux. The fragment preserved in the Law Mind corpus places the term in the neighborhood of civil trial procedure — the mechanics of pleading, proof, and judgment — which reflects the procedural context in which Anglo-American lawyers most often encountered French court terminology in the nineteenth century. The comparative civil procedure literature of that era (including works by Stephen, Mittermaier, and their American commentators) used tribunaux as a shorthand for the French court system when contrasting it with common law jury trial practice, particularly on questions of burden of proof and the judge's active role in fact-finding.

No entry in the standard English-language historical law dictionaries — Bouvier, Black's first through third editions, Burrill, or Wharton — treats tribunaux as a term requiring definition, consistent with its status as a borrowed term rather than a naturalized common law term.

Jurisdictional Note

In Quebec, tribunaux appears in the Civil Code and Code of Civil Procedure in contexts where the English versions use "courts." Louisiana sources similarly use the term in historical materials predating the full Americanization of the state's legal vocabulary. In both jurisdictions, the civilian meaning — courts of a specific institutional type within a hierarchical system — controls interpretation.

TRIBUNAUXmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1883

(1294) 'appear, the plaintiff must prove his case, the return day of the summons, and the so far as the burden of proof lies upon defendant must appear to answer the him. A verdict or judgment so obtained plaint. On answer being made in court, may be set aside by the court upon terms. the judge proceeds to try the cause in a 24. Trial at bar. - Sometimes a trial is ordered to take place before several judges and a jury; this was formerly called a "trial at bar" (see BAR, & 3), as opposed to the ordinary trial, which is sometimes called, by way of distinction, "trial at nisi prius." See NISI PRIUS. 25. New trial. - Where the judge who tried the action has misdirected the jury in point of law, or admitted evidence which ought to have been refused, or rejected evidence which ought to have been admitted, or where the jury have found against the weight of the evidence, or given excessive or grossly inadequate damages, and, generally, wherever it is clear that a fair trial has not been had, the party aggrieved may obtain an order for a new trial on motion made for that purpose. (See RULE, & 3.) The whole proceedings on the trial are then gone through afresh, and, if the case is again not properly tried, a third trial may be ordered, and so on. Sm. Ac. 149 et seq. 26. Trial before judge, referee, &c. -The other modes of trial are similar to trial before a judge and jury, except that the calling and swearing of the jury, and the summing up by the judge, are necessarily absent. Where the trial is before a judge alone, the evidence is sometimes taken by affidavit. 27. Trial with assessors.-Admiralty actions involving nautical questions, e. g. actions of collision, are generally tried in England before a judge with Trinity Masters sitting as assessors (q. v.) Rosc. Adm. 179. The following kinds of trial are either obsolete or very rare. 28. By the record-By certificate. — Trial by the record is where issue is joined as to the existence of a particular record (q.v.); such an issue is tried by the court itself on production of the record. (Sm. Ac. (11 edit.) 126; Arch. Pr. 750.) Trial by certificate is where a fact can only be proved by the certificate of a public official; thus, the custom of the city of London in respect of foreign attachment is proved by the oral certificate of the recorder. Mayor of London v. Cox, L. R. 2 H. L. 239. See Co. Litt. 74a; 9 Co. 30b et seq.; 3 Bl. 330, for other obsolete varieties of trial. 9. County court. - In county court actions, the plaintiff appears in court on summary way. (Poll. C. C. Pr. 159.) In small cases the plaintiff and defendant are sworn and make their statements to the judge, being asked questions by him when necessary; but in cases where counsel or solicitors are employed, and a jury summoned, the course of proceeding resembles that on a trial in the superior courts. 10. Criminal procedure. In criminal cases, the trial of a person accused of a crime usually takes place before a judge and petty jury, or at bar, i. e. by a jury before three or more judges; this last mode of trial is only used in important cases. (See QUEEN'S BENCH.) The steps on a criminal trial are substantially the same as those above described (supra, & 4), substituting "prosecutor" for "plaintiff, and "prisoner" for "defendant." (4 Steph. Com. 416. See, also, ACQUITTAL; CONVICTION.) The obsolete modes of trial by ordeal, by the corsned, and by battle, will be found described in Blackstone (4 Bl. Com. 342), and also under the appropriate titles in this work. 11. Trial by peers. In cases of treason and felony, in England, a nobleman is entitled to be tried by his peers, i. e. by members of the House of Lords. 1 Bl. Com. 401. See CERTIORARI, § 4; HOUSE OF LORDS; LORD HIGH

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