André Marie Jean Jacques Dupin
Encyclopedia
Chamber of Deputies
Chamber of deputies is the name given to a legislative body such as the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or can refer to a unicameral legislature.-Description:...
and of the Legislative Assembly
Legislative Assembly (France)
During the French Revolution, the Legislative Assembly was the legislature of France from 1 October 1791 to September 1792. It provided the focus of political debate and revolutionary law-making between the periods of the National Constituent Assembly and of the National Convention.The Legislative...
.
He was born at Varzy
Varzy
Varzy is a commune in the Nièvre department in central France.-Demographics:At the 1999 census, the population was 1303. On 1 January 2005, the estimate was 1359.-External links:* * * * *...
, in the Nièvre
Nièvre
Nièvre is a department in the centre of France named after the Nièvre River.-History:Nièvre is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...
département, in France. He was educated by his father, who was a lawyer of eminence, and at an early age he became principal clerk of an attorney at Paris. On the establishment of the Académie de Legislation he entered it as pupil from Nièvre. In 1800 he was made advocate, and in 1802, when the schools of law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
were opened, he received successively the degrees of licentiate and doctor from the new faculty. He was in 1810 an unsuccessful candidate for the chair of law at Paris, and in 1811 he also failed to obtain the office of advocate-general at the Court of Cassation
Court of Cassation (France)
The French Supreme Court of Judicature is France's court of last resort having jurisdiction over all matters triable in the judicial stream but only scope of review to determine a miscarriage of justice or certify a question of law based solely on points of law...
. About this time he was added to the commission charged with the classification of the laws of the empire, and, after the interruption caused by the events of 1814 and 1815, was charged with the sole care of that great work. When he entered the chamber of deputies in 1815 he at once took an active part in the debates as a member of the Liberal Opposition, and strenuously opposed the election of the son of Napoleon
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
as emperor after his father's abdication.
At the election after the second restoration Dupin was not reelected. He defended with great intrepidity the principal political victims of the reaction, among others, in conjunction with Nicolas Berryer, Marshal Ney
Michel Ney
Michel Ney , 1st Duc d'Elchingen, 1st Prince de la Moskowa was a French soldier and military commander during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. He was one of the original 18 Marshals of France created by Napoleon I...
; and in October 1815 boldly published a tractate entitled Libre Defense des accusés. In 1827 he was again elected a member of the chamber of deputies and in 1830 he voted the address of the 221, and on February 28 he was in the streets exhorting the citizens to resistance. At the end of 1832 he became president of the chamber, which office he held successively for eight years. On Louis Philippe
Louis-Philippe of France
Louis Philippe I was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the July Monarchy. His father was a duke who supported the French Revolution but was nevertheless guillotined. Louis Philippe fled France as a young man and spent 21 years in exile, including considerable time in the...
's abdication in 1848 Dupin introduced the young count of Paris
Count of Paris
Count of Paris was a title for the local magnate of the district around Paris in Carolingian times. Eventually, the count of Paris was elected to the French throne...
into the chamber, and proposed him as king with the duchess of Orléans as regent
Regent
A regent, from the Latin regens "one who reigns", is a person selected to act as head of state because the ruler is a minor, not present, or debilitated. Currently there are only two ruling Regencies in the world, sovereign Liechtenstein and the Malaysian constitutive state of Terengganu...
.
This attempt failed, but Dupin submitted to circumstances, and, retaining the office of procureur-general, his first act was to decide that justice should henceforth be rendered to the "name of the French people." In 1849 he was elected a member of the Assembly, and became president of the principal committee—that on legislation. After the coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
of December 2, 1851 he still retained his office of procureur-general, and did not resign it until effect was given to the decrees confiscating the property of the house of Orléans
House of Orleans
Orléans is the name used by several branches of the Royal House of France, all descended in the legitimate male line from the dynasty's founder, Hugh Capet. It became a tradition during France's ancien régime for the duchy of Orléans to be granted as an appanage to a younger son of the king...
.
In 1857 he was offered his old office by the emperor, and accepted it, explaining his acceptance in a discourse, a sentence of which may be employed to describe his whole political career. "I have always", he said, "belonged to France and never to parties."
Among Dupin's works, which are numerous, may be mentioned Principia Juris Civilis, 5 vols. (1806); Mémoires et plaidoyers de 1800 au 1ier janvier 1830, in 20 vols.; and Mémoires ou souvenirs du barreau, in 4 vols. (1855–1857).
His brother, Pierre Charles François Dupin (1784–1873), wrote several geometrical works, treating of descriptive geometry
Geometry
Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....
after the manner of Monge
Gaspard Monge
Gaspard Monge, Comte de Péluse was a French mathematician, revolutionary, and was inventor of descriptive geometry. During the French Revolution, he was involved in the complete reorganization of the educational system, founding the École Polytechnique...
, and of the theory of curves.