Gui-Jean-Baptiste Target
Gui-Jean-Baptiste Target (French pronunciation: [ɡi ʒɑ̃ batist taʁʒɛ], 17 December 1733 – 9 September 1806) was a French lawyer and politician.
Biography
Born in Paris, Target was the son of a lawyer, and was himself a lawyer to the Parlement of Paris. He acquired a great reputation as a lawyer, less by practice in the courts than in a consultative capacity,[1] and served the ancien régime as member of a committee to revise the civil and criminal laws of the kingdom.[citation needed] He strenuously opposed the "parlement Maupeou", devised by Chancellor Maupeou to replace the old judiciary bodies in 1771, refusing to plead before it,[1] an act that earned him the sobriquet of the "Virgin of the palace".[citation needed]
He was counsel for
In 1785, he was elected to the
He contributed to the development of the
French Revolution
In 1789, he was returned as one of the deputies of the
His excessive obesity, which made him the butt of the Royalist jokes, prevented his practising at the bar for some years before 1789. When
From Thermidor to Empire
Target took no part in public affairs during the Reign of Terror. Under the Directory he was made a member of the Institut de France in 1796 and of the Court of Cassation in 1798. He lived to collaborate in the earlier stages of the new criminal code.[1]
Works
Among his writings may be mentioned a paper on the
References
Attribution: public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Target, Gui Jean Baptiste". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 418–419. The Britannica gives the following references:
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the- Victor du Bled, "Les avocats et l'Académie française", in the Grand Revue (vol. ii. 1899).
- H. Moulin, Le Palais a l'Académie: Target et son fauteuil (Paris, 1884).
- P. Boulloche, Un avocat au 18ième siècle (Paris, 1893).