State Capacity, Legal Design and the Venality of Judicial Offices

2020

We develop a model of venal judicial offices, i.e., sales of public positions in the judicial sector, which were used extensively in France (and many other European countries) during the 17th and 18th centuries, and which led to vastly improved French State capacity despite limited opportunities to raise taxes and to borrow. In this model, venality provides financial resources for the ruler, at the cost of less control over judicial decisions. We rely on this model to provide an analytic narrative of the rise and the decline of venality in Old Regime France.