Guide des archives judiciaires

The author offers an understanding of Quebec's judicial evolution over time, based on court archives housed within the various regional locations of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec BAnQ). Her aim is to give researchers a general guide to these complex records to aid researchers in their work. The guide is divided into five sections: an outline of BAnQ's classification plan, the evolution of courts and a overview of typical descriptions of the main courts; the usual structure of court records is examined (the documentary hierarchy of the classification, the context of the production of the main types of documents, their nature and limits); how to search the judicial archives (the different routes to be taken and their requirements, ways of orienting oneself to find a particular document, the logic and the limits of finding aids produced by the clerks, the data necessary to identify documents and how to compensate for their absence, as well as the existence of certain newer and better performing research); restrictions on access to some documents, particularly to cases dealing with adoptions, to the archives of the Youth Court, to pardons, acquittals and discharges, and tp closed-door and non-publication orders; and the impact of preservation in the judicial archives. The author also provides annexes and a bibliography detailing information on several aspects of the history of courts and the structure of their documents.

Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec

2017

fr