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Three forms of legal resistance are identified in this paper, on the basis of a socio-historical analysis of the participation of lawyers and magistrates to the underground 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 resist. 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 law» shows how the legitimacy of law was used to justify opposition to the Vichy regime and its allies. This threefold conception, analytic as well as chronological, is an invitation to a more complex analysis of the relationships between law and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]