In eighteenth-century France, there were almost no theoretical evolutions in the judicial field. Yet, ways of judging differed between the beginning and the end of the century. This paper is based on a close reading of requests for royal pardon at two different moments, 1729 and 1775. Although the same judicial categories of Roman origin appear in both contexts, they are not used the same way. At the beginning of the century, most trials were initiated by the litigants, and the narratives deal mostly with the concrete event and its meaning in the social order. In 1775, the context was different: justice was more professional and less interested in the event itself than in the respect of a rule and in the person who trespassed it. The core of the judgment was at this point the intention and motives of the defendant. This analysis explains how these new ways of judging imply new ways of conceiving identity.