Amédée Girod de l'Ain

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Amédée Girod de l’Ain (18 October 1781 – 27 December 1847) was a French lawyer and politician who became Minister of Public Education and Religious Affairs in 1832.

He was born in Gex, Ain, as the eldest of four sons of Baron Jean-Louis Girod and Louise-Claudine-Armande Fabry. He studied law and spoke his first law case at seventeen in the Court of Cassation.

During Napoleon’s rule he held several legal jobs: deputy imperial prosecutor in Turin (1806), imperial prosecutor in Alexandria (1807), Attorney General to the Court of Appeal of Lyon (1810), auditor of the Council of State (1810), and advocate-general at the imperial court of Paris (1811). He kept his position after Napoleon fell, helped support the Bourbon restoration, and briefly became President of the Court of First Instance of the Seine during the Hundred Days.

In 1815 he was elected to represent Gex in the Chamber of Deputies and supported the imperial cause at first. He married Sivard de Beaulieu, grand-niece of the Duke of Lebrun. After the second Restoration he was excluded from the judiciary for a time, but returned as a counselor at the Paris court in 1819 and later presided over the courts of Seine and Versailles.

In 1827 he was elected Deputy for Chinon in Indre-et-Loire, sat with the constitutionalists, and became vice-president of the Chamber in 1829. He was reelected in 1830 and supported Louis-Philippe after the July Revolution, becoming Prefect of Police in August 1830. He was reelected as deputy in October 1830 and tried to ban political meetings, but was removed as police chief in November and joined the Council of State, receiving the Legion of Honor.

In 1831 he was elected president of the Chamber of Deputies. On 30 April 1832 he became Minister of Public Education and Religious Affairs, but held the post only until 11 October 1832. He was then made a peer of France and served as President of the Council of State, a role he kept with a short interruption in May 1839 when he was Minister of Justice in the Interim Cabinet.

Girod de l’Ain remained active in the Senate, writing a controversial report about the attempted insurrection of April 1834 and criticizing popular societies. He died in Paris on 27 December 1847 at the age of 66.