Women before the Bench: Female Litigants in Early Modern Normandy

The role of women in the courts of early modern Normandy, as litigants, aribiters, and seigneurs of high justice, sheds new light on their relationships to justice and the state. The cases brought before the benches of local bailliages, vicomtés, and high justices highlight the significant volume of civil litigation brought by women, and the legal strategies they used to extend their control over property and family. Despite the erosion of women’s stature in both royal law and political theory during the early modern period, the majority of Norman women continued to be judged by provincial customary laws in local courts. In practice, women extended their legal rights to property in the lower courts, and used the judicial system creatively to exceed the apparent limits of the law.