Parlements in ancien régime France — contrary to what their name would suggest to the modern reader — were not democratic or political institutions, but law courts . Membership in those courts was generally bought from the royal authority.

In theory, parlements were not legislative bodies. However, they had the duty to record all royal edicts and laws. Some, especially the Parlement de Paris, gradually acquired the habit of refusing to register legislation with which they disagreed until the king held a lit de justice to force them to act. Furthermore, the parlements could pass actes de réglement, which were laws that applied within their jurisdiction.

In the years immediately before the French Revolution, their extreme concern to preserve ancien régime institutions of noble privilege prevented France from carrying out miscellaneous reforms, especially in the area of taxation, even when those reforms had the support of theoretically absolute monarchs.

This behavior is one of the reasons why, since the French Revolution, French courts have been been forbidden by Article 5 of the French civil code to create law and act as legislative bodies, their only mandate being to interpret the law. This also stems from the fact that France is a country of Roman law in which precedents are not as powerful as in countries of common law.

In current French language usage, parlement means parliament. See:

• Parliament of France
• Belgian Federal Parliament
• Walloon Parliament