David Hoüard

Born in 1725, David Hoüard was a French lawyer and legal scholar whose work focused on customary law, especially the law of Normandy. Reliable sources describe him as an avocat au Parlement and note that he wrote several legal treatises published mainly between 1766 and 1785.

He is especially remembered for a well-known dictionary of Norman customary law, along with other studies that made him a useful guide to older French legal practice. Sources also indicate that he became a member of the Académie royale des inscriptions et belles-lettres and later of the Institut de France, signs that his scholarship was respected in his own time.

Although he is not widely known today, Hoüard's writing still matters to historians of law because it preserves and explains legal traditions that might otherwise have faded from view. He died in 1802.