On Racine’s The Litigants

Authors

  • Claude Witz Universität des Saarlandes
  • Martin Hlawon Saarland University

Keywords:

Plaideurs, The Litigants, Jean Racine, Satire, Farce, Los litigantes, sátira, comedia

Abstract

French tragedian Jean Racine’s only comedy The Litigants (1668) is a theatrical caricature of the people of the law and of legal procedure at the time when Louis XIV’s councillor Colbert was undertaking important reforms of the judicial system. Litigious claimants, a maniac judge, a masochistic bailiff and loquacious lawyers all concur in the frantic display of a justice drowned in formalities and the pursuit of individual interests. The study of this play reminds us of the importance of constant efforts to reduce the complexity of legal procedure.

Los litigantes (1668), la única comedia del dramaturgo francés Jean Racine, es una caricatura teatral del mundo del derecho y el procedimiento legal de la época en la que Colbert, canciller de Luis XIV, impulsó importantes reformas del sistema judicial. Demandantes litigiosos, un juez maníaco, un agente judicial masoquista y abogados locuaces coinciden en una exhibición frenética en la que la justicia se muestra ahogada en formalidades y la búsqueda de intereses individuales. El estudio de esta obra nos recuerda la importancia de los esfuerzos constantes para reducir la complejidad del procedimiento legal.

DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2543495

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
Views 252
Downloads:
PDF 102


Author Biographies

Claude Witz, Universität des Saarlandes

Claude Witz (Ph.D. University of Strasbourg, 1979) is Professor of Law at the University of Strasbourg, and delegated to Saarland University, where he is the Chair of French Private Law and Co-director of the Franco-German Legal Center.

Martin Hlawon, Saarland University

Martin Hlawon (LL.M., Saarland University, 2014; German Bar Exam, 2010; Diplom-Jurist, LMU Munich, 2008; Maîtrise en droit, Panthéon-Assas University Paris, 2004) is research assistant at the Chair of French Private Law at Saarland University.

Downloads

How to Cite

Witz, C. and Hlawon, M. (2014) “On Racine’s The Litigants”, Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 4(6), pp. 1143–1155. Available at: https://opo.iisj.net/index.php/osls/article/view/361 (Accessed: 22 December 2024).

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 6 (2014): Justice in Literature: New Perspectives on European Legal Culture

Section

Part I: Classic authors

License

OSLS strictly respects intellectual property rights and it is our policy that the author retains copyright, and articles are made available under a Creative Commons licence. The Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution No-Derivatives licence is our default licence, further details available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 If this is not acceptable to you, please contact us.

The non-exclusive permission you grant to us includes the rights to disseminate the bibliographic details of the article, including the abstract supplied by you, and to authorise others, including bibliographic databases, indexing and contents alerting services, to copy and communicate these details.

For information on how to share and store your own article at each stage of production from submission to final publication, please read our Self-Archiving and Sharing policy.

The Copyright Notice showing the author and co-authors, and the Creative Commons license will be displayed on the article, and you must agree to this as part of the submission process. Please ensure that all co-authors are properly attributed and that they understand and accept these terms.