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141 chapter five the campaign against the juries, circa 1890–1914 It was not long before magistrates began to respond to the increased jury nullification of the era after 1880 by renewing their attacks on the jury system . But the new criticisms were different from those of the past, and they entailed a major irony. The rise of “scientific” criminology was the most important contributor to increased jury-based leniency, and in that sense the state and its magistrates found it more difficult to control jurors. But the magistrates and their allies soon discovered that science could be used against the jury. The new criminological ideas seemed to call for a justice by experts in place of a justice by jurors. What is more, magisterial criticisms of the juries were now more often seconded by other jurists, the press, criminologists , politicians, and a new group—repopulationists—who were angered by the many acquittals for abortion. Moreover, from the mid-1890s, Republican magistrates responded to increased jury leniency by taking the process of correctionalization even further than had their Bonapartist-monarchist predecessors. In general, the attack on the jury system that would ultimately result in the destruction of its independence and the further reduction of its role in the justice system began in earnest during the approximate quartercentury preceding the outbreak of World War I. At the same time, and for several reasons, liberal, Republican politicians—even some left-wing ones— began to waver in their defense of the jury system. At least one of these reasons was political rather than criminological: the fearful reaction of Republican politicians to the wave of anarchist violence that France experienced in the early and mid-1890s. The government responded with the repressive lois scélérates (villainous laws) of 1893–94. In December 1893, one anarchist, Auguste Vaillant, threw a bomb in the Chamber of Deputies, wounding several of the lawmakers.1 The Parliament quickly responded by strengthening an existing law against “apologie [praise or vindication] for criminal acts” in order to repress anarchist propaganda or “any entente [understanding or agreement] with the goal of preparing or 142 The Campaign against the Juries committing crimes against persons or properties” and stipulated that those found guilty be punished with hard labor.2 However, more than half of the persons tried by juries in 1894 for violating the revised law were acquitted.3 Then in July 1894, following the assassination of President Sadi Carnot by an anarchist, the Parliament passed a new law transferring trials of persons accused of anarchist activities from the cours d’assises to the tribunaux correctionnels.4 Evidently, this measure was aimed more against the slowness of procedures in the cours d’assises than it was a fear of jury “indulgence.”5 The Radical Republicans protested against the act but did not repeal it when they came to power.6 Even before this, in March 1893, a law had been enacted transferring from the cours d’assises to the tribunaux correctionnels trials for persons accused of “outrages by means of the press against chiefs of state or their ambassadors.”7 In subsequent years, the cour de cassation handed down a number of decisions embodying legal interpretations that whittled away still more of the jurisdiction of the juries in press cases.8 Evidently, these cour de cassation opinions, and the laws of 1893–94, were largely responsible for the decline in the number of persons tried by juries for délits politiques et de presse from the mid-1890s on. In 1879 and 1880, when the restrictive law of 1875 was still in effect, only a tiny number (five in the first year, two in the second) of persons were tried by juries for délits politiques et de presse. The law of 1881 restoring most trials for political and press offenses to juries was followed by a big increase, to an average of 61 per year. In 1894, the number rose sharply, to 263, mostly due to prosecutions under the anti-anarchist law of December 1893.9 From 1895 through 1913, however, an average of only 46 persons per year were tried for délits politiques et de presse in the cours d’assises. If one excludes the figures for 1896 and 1907, years in which abnormally high numbers of people (172 in the first year and 109 in the second) were tried by juries, the annual average came to only 35. Nearly half of all persons tried for political and press...

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