Bed of Justice

Bed of Justice (French, lit de justice), the seat or platform occupied by the kings of France whenever they were present at sessions of the French royal court known as the Parlement. In French judicial history, the term was also used to denote a session of the Parlement held in the presence of the king and called specifically to overrule previous decisions of the Parlement or to force the acceptance of royal edicts or ordinances that the Parlement had rejected. This usage was based on the theory that the authority of the Parlement was derived from the Crown, and that in the presence of the king (the source of authority) this delegated authority ceased to exist. Under this legal fiction, the Parlement was legally incapable of resisting any demand that the king might make from the bed of justice. Louis XV used the device repeatedly to try to control the rebellious Parlements of the 18th century, but these attempts at coercion usually only intensified resistance to royal authority. The bed of justice was last used by King Louis XVI in 1787, during the period of unrest that immediately preceded the French Revolution, (1789).