This project, born in 2005, is part of an integrated history of justice initiated by the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL – Xavier Rousseaux), the University Faculties of Notre Dame de la Paix in Namur (FUNDP – Axel Tixhon) and the Saint-Louis University Faculties of Brussels (FUSL – †Jean-Pierre Nandrin). At the time, the Belgian judiciary represented the poor relation of historiography despite the essential role it had always played in the political and social life of the country. The aim of the project was therefore to overcome this deficiency by offering an essential tool for the study of a social body of such magnitude.. Subsidized by the Fonds de la Recherche Fondamentale Collective (FRFC), the project then benefited from the support of the FNRS, which made it possible to hire several computer scientists and researchers in History, at the service of improving the base, of his diet, and its scientific value. Initially focused on the history of the Belgian judiciary from 1830 to 1914, the project gradually expanded both upstream and downstream of this period as illustrated in the following summary.
Topics | Funding | Researchers | Promoters |
Colonial magistrates, 1885-1962 | FNRS (UCL and USL-B) |
Amandine Dumont Pascaline By Poland |
Xavier Rousseaux, Aurore François, Nathalie Tousignant |
Colonial magistrates, preliminary study | FRFC (UCL) | Laurence Montel
Enika Ngongo |
Xavier Rousseaux |
Military magistrates, 1830-1914 | FRFC (UCL) | Laurence Montel | Xavier Rousseaux |
Entrance speech, 1830-1914 | PAI (FUSL) | Aude Hendrik | Jean-Pierre Nandrin |
Belgian judiciary, 1940-1945 | PAI (FUSL) | Kirsten Peters | Jean-Pierre Nandrin |
Belgian judiciary, 1914-1918 | PAI (CEGES) | Mélanie Bost | Xavier Rousseaux |
Children's judges, 1912-1965 | FNRS (UCL) | David Niget | Xavier Rousseaux |
Cassation magistrates, 1918-1939 | FNRS (FUSL) | Vincent Bernaudeau | Jean-Pierre Nandrin |
French judiciary, 1795-1814 | FRFC (UNamur) | Catherine Goffin | Axel Tixhon |
Namur lawyers | Bénédicte Rochet | Axel Tixhon | |
Belgian judiciary, 1830-1914 | FRFC (UCL) | Françoise Muller | Xavier Rousseaux, Axel Tixhon, Jean-Pierre Nandrin |
The project integration, in 2007, to an inter-university attraction center financed by the Belgian scientific policy on "Justice et Société : Histoire sociopolitique de la justice en Belgique (1795-2005) " allowed in 2010 a significant improvement of the performances of the application (Needs analysis by Aurore François and Françoise Muller, made by S. A. CEDITI). A second overhaul, essentially aimed at adapting the database to the complexity of colonial data and further increasing the efficiency of search engines, was carried out in May-August 2015 with the support of the PAI 07/22 “Justice & Populations: The Belgian Experience in International Perspective” (Needs analysis by Françoise Muller with the collaboration of Aurore François, made by S.A.. REVER).