Previous Usage
Ordonnances have been extensively used as a form of rule by decree in periods where the government operated without a working Parliament: Vichy France, where the executive had dismissed Parliament and other democratic structures, the Provisional Government of the French Republic, until it could establish a legislature, and in the last days of the French Fourth Republic and the early days of the French Fifth Republic, until the new constitution was operating and legislative elections had been held (Article 92 of the Constitution, now repealed).
Certain legal texts enacted by the King in the medieval and ancien régime eras were called ordonnances, the best known of which today is the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts.
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