L’essai dans la littérature juridique française du xix^e siècle

This study develops a two-fold hypothesis concerning the nineteenth-century legal essay. Firstly, that the essay was relatively -but significantly – absent before 1880, due to a lack of standardised legal writings. The second hypothesis is that key changes at the tail-end of the century transformed the essay into a space in which legal practitioners could escape the objectivity or technicality of legal production and express themselves more freely.