CASSATION, Court of (Cour de Cassa 672, one of the most important institutions of m ern France, which gives to the whole juris diction of that country coherency and uniform ity without endangering the necessary inde pendence of the courts. It was established by the first National Assembly, and has been pre served in every essential respect, under all the changes of the Revolution and Restoration. It has been maintained even in those districts which, by their union with France became subjected to French laws, but by the Peace of Paris again became part of the Prussian mon archy. In France, as early as the reign of Louis IX (1226-70), though a separate court of justice had come into being, petitions were presented to the King by appellants from the decisions of the courts. In later times appeals to the parliaments, as the highest courts of the kingdom, came into use, and their decisions were not liable to be set aside by the ordinary forms of law. Yet the parties were allowed to dispute even these decisions if they were founded upon errors of fact or violated undis puted principles of law; and by an ordinance of 1302 it was provided that the parties should be allowed royal letters for the defense of their rights against the decisions of the Supreme Courts (letters de grace de dire contre les arrets), which should be issued from the chancery (by the chancellor of France). The case was then sent back to the Parliament for further investigation, but was examined and decided in the presence of the king himself, or of a special commissioner. An abuse, however, crept in of transferring these cases to the royal council, where they were decided by officers called maitres des requites. These letters re ceived the name of lettres de proposition d'er reur, and during the civil commotions at the end of the 14th century began to be more frequently presented to the council, which, as soon as one party complained of the partiality of the parlia ments, transferred the case to its own bar, and obstructed the course of justice by lettres &Rat, suspensions of the process, on the pretext of the absence of one of the parties in the service of the king. Under the Chancellor Poyet (1538-42), this abuse reached its highest pitch; but the Chancellors Olivier (1545-51) and Hopital (1560-68), the two great reformers of French jurisprudence, limited the use of these lettres till, by the Ordinance of Blois (1576), all the provisions against the decisions of the parliaments were reduced to these three :— the proposition d'erreur, for an error of fact; re quite civile, to restore the parties to their for mer condition on account of the fraud of one of the parties or the mistakes of the attorney; and cassation (petition for abrogation), for vio lation of forms or settled principles of law. By the famous Order of Procedure of 1667 the first of these provisions was abolished, but the province of the requite civile and cassation was enlarged and more precisely defined. The former was always brought before the court itself and decided there, the latter before the council. For this purpose, in the conseil privi, or conseil des parties, a particular committee was formed, consisting of the chancellor, the four Secretaries of State (Ministers of the De partments), the Council of State, and all the maitres des requites (in 1789, 78 in number). The decisions of this committee were too much influenced by the will of the king and the ministers, and by various other circumstances, so that they did not enjoy great respect, though they often exposed acts of great in justice on the part of the Parliament and other high courts. It was therefore abolished in the
first National Assembly, and its place supplied by an independent court — the tribunal de cas sation (decrees of 27 Nov. and 1 Dec. 1790), which was retained in all the constitutions and received under the Imperial government (1804) the name tour de cassation, which it still re tains. It consisted, according to the organiza tion of 1800, of 48 members, chosen from the Senate, on the nomination of the consuls, who elected their own president from among them selves. The appointment of president was afterward vested in the emperor. In the Charte Constitutionelle of 1814 the number of members of the Cour de Cassation was fixed at 49, at which it still remains. The members are appointed for life by the President of the Republic, and consist of a first president, three presidents of sections, and 45 councillors, a public prosecutor, the procureur-general and 6 substitutes, the avocats-generaux. The Minister of Justice, or Keeper of the Seals (garde des sceaux) has the right of presiding on certain occasions. This court never decides on the main question at issue, but on the competency of the other courts and on the petitions to have their decisions reviewed or annulled, and assigns the question to another court if a decision is to be set aside for an evident violation of the forms or the principles of the law. For this purpose it is divided into three sections or chambers:— the chambre des requites, which decides on the admissibility of the petitions in civil cases; the chambre de cassation civile; and the chambre de cassation criminelle. After a decision has been reversed, if a second court decides the same case in the same way, and an appeal is entered again, the Court of Cassation must either request an authentic explanation of the law from the government, or at least all the three sec tions must unite, to pronounce a second reversal or cassation; and if a third decision is the same as the preceding, the court before which the case is again brought must submit to the doc trine of the Court of Cassation on the point of law in dispute. This system, which dates from 2 April 1837, gives great authority to this court in matters of jurisprudence. According to the law in force before 1837, the court before which a case was brought for decision a third time was not required to adopt the views of the Court of Cassation, but after the third decision there was no further appeal. The government, how ever, in that case gave an authentic interpreta tion of the law if there was any occasion for so doing. Until the end of 1852 there was a simi lar Court of Cassation for the Prussian province of the Rhine, but in 1853 its jurisdiction was transferred to the supreme Prussian tribunal sit ting at Berlin. The sentences of the Court of Cassation are not only recorded in the journals of the courts, the decisions of which are re versed, but published likewise in an official bulletin, by which consistency and uniformity are preserved. The tribunal of cassation has enjoyed from its commencement the respect and confidence of France, and has numbered among its members several of the most dis tinguished lawyers; as the President Henrion de Fansey, the councillors, Chabot, Merlin and Carnot. The court possesses disciplinary powers over the judges of other courts, and the procureur-general over other procureur generaux. See APPEAL; COURT.
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