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Parlements were law courts in ancien régime France. Membership in those courts was generally bought from the royal authority. Contrary to what their name would suggest to the modern reader, the parlements were not democratic institutions. parler means to talk in French.
In theory, parlements were not legislative bodies. However, they had the duty to record all royal edicts and laws. Some, especially the Parlement de Paris, gradually took the habit to refuse the registration of legislation with which they disagreed until the king held a lit de justice to force them to act.
In the years immediately before the French Revolution, their extreme concern to preserve ancien régime institutions of noble privilege prevented France from carrying out miscellaneous reforms, especially in the area of taxation, even when those reforms had the support of theoretically absolute monarchs.
This behavior has been cited as one of the reasons why, since the French Revolution, French courts, contrary to the common law tradition, have been supposed, at least in theory, not to create law and act as legislative bodies, but only to interpret law.
In current French language usage, parlement means parliament. See:
fr:Parlement de Paris
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