Ordinance of 9 August 1944

The Ordinance of 9 August 1944 was a constitutional law enacted by the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF) during the Liberation of France which re-established republican rule of law in mainland France after four years of occupation by Nazi Germany and control by the collaborationist Vichy regime.

Background


The refusal to consider the Vichy regime as a legally constituted authority was a constant in the Free France founded by Charles de Gaulle. Already in his Brazzaville Manifesto of 27 October 1940, the general had proclaimed that there was no longer a French government, and that "the Vichy-based organization that claims to bear this name is unconstitutional and submits to the invader", even as he published on the same day the first Ordinance of Free France establishing the Empire Defense Council, which organized "the legal authority in all parts of the [colonial] Empire liberated from control of the enemy ... based on French legislation prior to 23 June 1940."

Contents
Promulgated in Algiers by the GPRF led by General de Gaulle, the ordinance expunged all trappings of legality from the Vichy regime, declaring all constitutional regulatory texts enacted by the regime of Pétain and Laval to be void ab initio, beginning with the Constitutional Law of 10 July 1940. As a consequence, the GPRF did not have to explicitly proclaim the return of Republican government in France, as the latter had never legally been dissolved. More generally, this ordinance organized the conditions for the transition from the norms in force under Vichy, to republican norms, in the historical context of the Liberation.

Through the text of this ordinance Free France, embodied by the GPRF and led by General de Gaulle, retroactively constituted itself as the continuous and uninterrupted extension of the French Republic. It proclaimed the Vichy regime stripped of all right to present itself as the legal successor of the Third Republic.

This ordinance thus ratified the definitive victory of the government in exile established by de Gaulle as early as 1940 with the Empire Defense Council, which disputed Vichy's claim to legitimate authority, with both parties then claiming sole right to represent France during the war.

Additionally, by explicitly linking France's mode of government to the Republic, the ordinance endorsed a republican vision of France that precluded any legitimacy for a modification of this form of government.

Although the ordinance declared that all Vichy laws were null and void, as reversing all Vichy decisions during the previous four years was impractical, it also stated that only those explicitly listed were invalid.