Voting procedures in collegiate courts. The spread of Enlightenment ideas in 19th century Europe

Abstract

In collegiate courts, individual judges’ votes need to be merged into a joint decision. Various procedures were used on the basis of the learned Roman and Canon law traditions. In the time of Enlightenment, French scholarpoliticians realized how decisive these conventions can be for the overall decision of cases. Adrien Duport (1759-1798), who discussed the matter with Nicolas de Condorcet (1786-1794), made a ground-breaking proposal in the Assemblée nationale of 1790. His ideas were taken up by the Geneva lawyer Pierre François Bellot (1776-1836). Bellot’s ‘Loi sur la procedure civile’ (1819) strongly influenced legislative activities toward civil procedure reform in various German states.