Professionalising a grand corps by capturing an idea: Public service in the French Conseil d'État (1872-1940)

Abstract

From the 1870s and throughout France's Third Republic, the use of the notion of public service became increasingly frequent. This development was driven in particular by the Conseil d'État and reflected the development of administrative law at the time. In concert with certain legal scholars, members of the Conseil came to see the concept as a possible paradigm for their discipline, as well as a means, in the light of their competition with civil law proponents, to organise their "jurisdiction" (both literally and in the sense of Andrew Abbott's ecology of the professions). In addition, the reference to public service enabled the republicanisation as well as the professionalisation of an organisation which, in a context of democratisation, needed to restore its legitimacy. Based on a prosopographic study and archival research on the institution, the article describes the efforts of these state lawyers to reconfigure the legal field and have the boundaries of their professional segment acknowledged. It shows that the case law on public services conjures up a bureaucratic culture much more than a political ideology.