Zola and Public Law according to His Excellency Eugène Rougon

The purpose of this research work is to study the political and legal thought of Zola in Son Excellence Eugène Rougon and to understand to what extent the author can be considered as a historian of law.
This sixth novel of the cycle Les Rougon Macquart, hardly seems to have been studied that from a literary or purely historic point of view. Yet, by opening for the first time this novel, the jurist is surprised hearing the writer to speak to him so well notions and institutions which he knows.
He notices while the naturalistic literature of the writer makes relive with a big perspicacity the Second Empire, fundamental time in the history of institutions, administrative law and public liberties.
The novelist so reconstitutes under the eyes two trials in front of the Council of State, at the very moment when the « recours pour excès de pouvoir » is growing and the « ministre juge » theory, in decline.
Also, about thirty years before the works of Moisei Ostrogorski, the Rougon's « bande » appears, as a  « political party » before the term existed and allows Zola - in the course of its descriptions - to show its fine qualities of political analyst.
As for the public liberties (the freedom of the media in particular), they will not escape the acerbic criticism of a republican writer.
These criticisms - which let for a long time think that Zola was the privileged author of the « légende noire du Second Empire » - are in reality, more subtle than it countered there.
The clear-sightedness of the man of letters allows so more than ever to light the man of right avid to understand its own univers.