Cambacérès, Jean-Jacques-Régis de

(1753-1824) (duke of Parma)

   jurist, political figure

   Born in Montpellier, where he served in the financial office (1771), Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cam-bacérès, who was educated as an attorney, in 1789 became president of the criminal court of Hérault. Elected to the National Convention during the revolution of 1789 (1792), he voted for the death of King louis XVI and called for the arrest of the Girondin leaders after the treason of charles dumouriez. Later, avoiding party politics, he edited a first draft of the Civil Code, which was presented to the Convention in August 1793 and rejected (it later would be a basis for the Code Napoléon). A member of the Council of Five Hundred and Minister of Justice (June 18, 1799), Cambacérès was named second consul at the request of Napoléon Bonaparte (see napoléon i). President of the Senate and of the Council of state, he specialized in issues of judicial administration and contributed to the formulation of the Civil Code. Named arch-chancellor of the Empire (1804) and duke of Parma (1808), he went over to the Bourbons in 1814 but, during the Hundred Days, again served Napoléon as minister of justice and as president of the House of Peers. After the Restoration of the Bourbons, he was proscribed as a regicide and went into exile (1815), but three years later his legal and political rights were restored and he returned to France. Cambacérès was elected to the Académie Française in 1803 but expelled in 1816.