Here's How France Ended Up With Departments

Of all the institutions of the Old Regime, the justice system was criticized the most harshly and the most justifiably.

French justice under the Old Regime was marked by the large number of courts, the overlapping of their jurisdictions, the slowness and the cost of proceedings, the harshness of the criminal procedure, the cruelty of the punishments and the severity of the sentences for ordinary people, a severity that contrasted with the extreme clemency shown to the privileged classes. There was generally little love for judges and prosecutors, due to the fact that they defended a system that favoured their own interests but which the majority of people rejected. Only lawyers drawn from the middle or the lower bourgeoisie acknowledged the need for judicial reform.

A violent campaign in favour of reorganizing the justice system had convulsed the country since 1760. Montesquieu had earlier addressed strong criticisms against the organization of the judiciary. But it was Voltaire who in his writings brought the most violent blows against the judicial edifice of the Old Regime. Moreover, the movement for reform was not exclusively French. Even the most important works in favour of the reorganization of the judiciary were published abroad, in England and Italy. Thus, Beccaria's treatise On Crimes and Punishments was published in Italian in 1764 before being translated into French in 1766.