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From 1963 to 1981, the French Republic had a special court, the Cour de sûreté de l’État [or State Security Court], which tried individuals accused of political crimes. The establishment of this political jurisdiction by the National Assembly in January 1963 should not be considered its original act of creation, however. Though apparently new, the Cour de sûreté de l’État in fact merely represented the institutionalisation of the justice d’exception [“exceptional justice”, or cases of treason and other exceptions to the legal system] which had been instated during the last months of the Algerian War of Independence. The Court was in fact the descendent of a temporary court created in 1961, the Tribunal militaire [Military Tribunal], now transformed into a permanent court.