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Three forms of legal resistance are identified in this paper, on the basis of a sociohistorical analysis of the participation of lawyers and magistrates to the resistance movement in France during World War Two. First, « resistance despite the law » describes the antagonism between legalism and resistance that should have prevented lawyers from being committed to the resistance movement. Second, « resistance in the shadow of the law » depicts how, progressively, the subversive potentialities of judicial professions were discovered and used. Third, « resistance in the name of the law » shows how the legitimacy of law was used to justify opposition to the Vichy regime and its allies. This threefold conception, analytical as well as chronological, is an invitation to a more complex analysis of the relationships between law and politics.