Le law french, un idiome protégeant les privilèges du monde des juristes anglais entre 1250 et 1731

This paper tells the story of Law French, a tongue that emerged during the reign of Henry II of England (1154-1189) and which dominated the English common law until the beginning of the eighteenth century. Anglo-Norman French played a pivotal role during the time when the foundations of the English common law systems were being laid. It was like a dual building site of two edifices that propped each other up: the law and the development of its concepts, on the one hand, and the language and the evolution of its technical, specialised vocabulary, on the other. While Law French was confirmed as the legal language, the overall and more general use of Anglo-Norman French was declining among the rest of society. This resulted in the formation of a specialised idiom comprehensible only to those within the closed confines of the legal profession. The ordinary men not learned in the law were excluded, not only due to the use of a specialised language but also because that tongue became increasingly foreign to them