Rooted in philosophy and law: Legal periodicals in the Belgian region before Belgium’s independence (1600-1830)

Looking for the origins of Belgian legal journals before 1830, Sebastiaan Vandenbogaerde offers a chronological exploration of potential influences. The origins may be tracked to seventeenth and eighteenth centuries learned journals, but the foreign occupation periods, French (1789-1815) and Dutch (1815-1830) proved to be crucial. The legacy of Enlightenment identifies with the Journal de Jurisprudence. After the French Revolution, the new judicial system imposes judges to motivate their rulings. This rule resulted in a rise of case law compendia, affordable and accessible to practitioners. The Napoleonic period sets up the training of jurists at the École spéciale de législation. At that time, practitioners dominated in editorial boards. A first collection of specific titles appears in the 1820s, as milestones of what is produced in universities and courts on the Belgian territory

Belgium’s legal periodicals as vectors of translation policy : how Flemish legal journals contributed to the development of a Dutch legal language

Belgium’s national history has been characterized by linguistic issues. As soon as Belgium gained independence in 1830, French was promoted as the nation’s first and most important language, despite the fact that a large majority of its people spoke Flemish. Constitutionally, the choice of which language to use was free, but the legal world easily adopted French. Flemish was only able to loosen the yoke of French during the final quarter of the nineteenth century, after a few sensational court cases. Jurists played a primordial role in the use of Flemish as a full-fledged legal professional language and one of their instruments were legal periodicals. Editors and authors used their position to offer colleagues translations of legal terminology, and gave guidelines as to how Flemish could and should be used in the Flanders court rooms (in Wallonia, French was used exclusively). This article examines the works that promoted the idea of Flemish as a professional legal language and the methods that were seen as the best way to reach the goal of a unilingual legal world in Flander

'Une telle apathie est presque coupable' : how in Belgium’s Journal des tribunaux the interest for the Congo Free State sparked off (1885-1908)

When the Congo Free State (CFS) was established in 1885, King Leopold II ruled it as its personal territory. At first Belgian politicians and lawyers seemed not to care about the colonial ambitions of its sovereign. That changed during the 1890s, when the Leopoldian CFS was internationally accused of committing crimes against humanity. Belgium’s Parliament urged to find a solution in the annexation project during the first decade of the 20th century. How did Belgian lawyers perceive this issue ? Through means of legal periodicals, which reflect and shape opinions on certain topics, it is possible to reconstruct the annexation history of the CFS by Belgium in 1908. The Journal des tribunaux is the most relevant titles on this subject, as it is the primus inter pares of legal periodicals at that time and connected to all the relevant associations in the political, legal and colonial world.Lorsque l’État Indépendant du Congo (EIC) fut établi en 1885, le roi Léopold II le considéra comme son territoire personnel. Au début, les politiciens et les avocats belges ne semblaient pas se soucier des ambitions coloniales de son souverain. Leur attitude changea au cours des années 1890, lorsque Léopold II et l’ÉIC furent internationalement accusés de commettre des crimes contre l’humanité. Le Parlement belge chercha et trouva une solution dans le projet d’annexion durant la première décennie du XXe siècle. Comment les avocats belges perçurent cette question ? À travers les revues juridiques, qui reflètent et forment des opinions, il est possible de reconstruire l’histoire de l’annexion de l’État libre congolais par la Belgique. Le Journal des tribunaux est le titre le plus important de son époque, primus inter pares des revues juridiques, il est lié à toutes les associations des mondes politique, juridique et colonial

The neutralities of Belgium, the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo (1855-1914) seen through the journal des tribunaux

The violation of Belgium’s perpetual neutrality by Germany is a classic topos of diplomatic history in the European theatre of the Great War. The Treaty of London (19 April 1839) was torn up by Kaiser Wilhelm as a “Scrap of Paper”. Yet, what were the conception foundations of this sui generis institution of international law? To what extent could this status have been applicable to Congo? International law is not a shortlist of enforceable norms, but an arena wherein states seek legitimation for their political choices. The vagueness of treaty clauses, such as the Treaty of London (1839) or the Berlin Final Act (1885), was both a weakness and a guarantee for the argumentative comprehensiveness of the respective legal regimes. This can be illustrated at two distinct levels. First, Belgian scholars (Nys, Descamps) have been influential in international doctrine (Koskenniemi, Gentle Civilizer of Nations). Second, international affairs were a topos of controversy in the Journal des Tribunaux, the weekly legal periodical created by Edmond Picard and continued by Léon Hennebicq. The traditional sources of international law (treaties, doctrine, custom) reveal multiple positions on the neutrality status of both metropolis and colony. Arendt’s landmark treatise on Belgian neutrality (1845) has proven to be prophetic. The shaky foundations of perpetual neutrality reach back to the early modern period. Positivist stances such as those of Liszt (1913) and Oppenheim (1902) could position neutrality as an exception with regards to the standard narrative of state-made international law. This is an important caveat applied to pacifist literature. Further on, patriotic narratives in the Journal des Tribunaux were heavily influenced by foreign doctrine. Both diplomacy and domestic political culture were drenched in legal language, produced by and for the social world of lawyer

Êtes-vous Justice, Minerve ou Thémis? Een tijdschriftlogo als numen mixtum en symptoom van de versmelting van kunst & recht in het Belgische fin de siècle

Publishing house Larcier uses an emblematic figure as a company brand. Since the end of the 19th century, a goddess with helmet and sword adorns its legal publications. Often, the logo is seen as the virtue Justitia, although it clearly depicts the antique goddess Athena or Minerva. This article argues this mix-up is neither coincidental nor recent, though must be seen as a numen mixtum, a deliberate iconographic synthesis of two divinities. Combining legal periodicals and legal iconography, the authors show how Brussels’ fin-de-siècle legal professionals, led by Edmond Picard, were convinced that both art and law contributed to the Belgian nation and that the boundaries between artists and jurists were rather thin. Within this legal-artistic climate, art and law, two of Minerva’s key domains, both had to be vulgarized in one and the same effort