Justice in France - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

In France, judges are considered civil servants exercising one of the sovereign powers of the state, and, accordingly, only French citizens are eligible for judgeship. France's independent judiciary enjoys special statutory protection from the executive branch. Procedures for the appointment, promotion, and removal of judges vary depending on whether it is for the judicial, administrative, or audit court stream. Judicial appointments must be approved by a special panel, the High Council of the Judiciary, made up of other judges from receiving court. Once appointed, judges serve for life and cannot be removed without specific disciplinary proceedings conducted before the Council conducted in due process

Due process

Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...

.

The Ministry of Justice

Minister of Justice (France)

The Ministry of Justice is controlled by the French Minister of Justice , a top-level cabinet position in the French government. The current Minister of Justice is Michel Mercier...

handles the administration of courts and judiciary including paying salaries or constructing new courthouses. The Ministry also funds and administers the prison system. Lastly, it receives and processes applications for presidential pardon

Pardon

Clemency means the forgiveness of a crime or the cancellation of the penalty associated with it. It is a general concept that encompasses several related procedures: pardoning, commutation, remission and reprieves...

s and proposes legislation dealing with matters of civil or criminal justice. The Minister of Justice is also the head of public prosecution, though this is controversial since it is seen to represent a conflict of interest in cases such as political corruption

Political corruption

Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...

against politicians.

The structure of the French judiciary is divided into three tiers:

Inferior courts of original and general jurisdiction
Intermediate appellate courts which hear cases on appeal from lower courts
Courts of last resort which hear appeals from lower appellate courts on the interpretation of law.

There are exceptions to this scheme, as noted below.

Glossary of Key Terms

Note: There exist significant problems with applying non-French terminology and concepts related to law and justice to the French justice system. For this reason, we shall define some of the words used in the rest of the article.

appel "appeal": for almost all courts in France (except very minor cases), it is possible to appeal
Appeal
An appeal is a petition for review of a case that has been decided by a court of law. The petition is made to a higher court for the purpose of overturning the lower court's decision....

the ruling, both for disagreement on how the court appreciated the facts or on disagreements with how the court interpreted the law. Another recourse is cassation.
Cassation The supreme courts (Cour de Cassation and Conseil d'État) act as cassation jurisdictions, which means that they have supreme jurisdiction on quashing the judgments of inferior courts if those courts misapplied law. Generally, cassation is based not on outright violations of law, but on diverging interpretations of law between the courts. Cassation is not based on the facts of the case. Cassation is always open as a final recourse.
chambre "division": subdivisions of a large court of general jurisdiction, which may be each specialized on a specific area of law.
Code "law code": collection of enacted statutory law or regulations relating to a single topic. Modern French law codes date back to the Napoleonic Code
Napoleonic code
The Napoleonic Code — or Code Napoléon — is the French civil code, established under Napoléon I in 1804. The code forbade privileges based on birth, allowed freedom of religion, and specified that government jobs go to the most qualified...

, though all codes have since been thoroughly revised or even rewritten. Some codes were written as such; others were codified by taking existing statutes and statutory instruments (regulations and orders) and re-organizing them into a single law code.
commissaire du gouvernement "Commissioner-in-Council": unaffiliated judicial officer who advise the government in cases heard by administrative courts or regional audit courts. Despite their title, they are not commissioned by the executive but are drawn from a court's active judges. They do not represent the government. Because of the confusing terminology, they were renamed rapporteur public (public report drafter).
Contradictoire. There is a requirement that all justice should render a decision after a débat contradictoire, which means that all suspects, or people risking a penalty, should be able to contradict the allegations that they face. This implies, for instance, that they should be able to have an attorney
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

to defend them, and that this attorney should have access to the prosecution files. Another implications is that trials in absentia
In absentia
In absentia is Latin for "in the absence". In legal use, it usually means a trial at which the defendant is not physically present. The phrase is not ordinarily a mere observation, but suggests recognition of violation to a defendant's right to be present in court proceedings in a criminal trial.In...

(that is, without the presence of the suspect) had limited legal consequences, since it is a requirement of the débat contradictoire that the suspects should be able to speak for himself or herself.
contravention "misdemeanor, summary offence": lowest kind of crimes punishable by fines or, in the past, at most short jail sentences. They consist mostly of minor parking and traffic violations.
crime "major felony, major indictable offence": severest crime punishable by a prison sentence greater of 10 or more years; the vast majority of crimes committed are, in decreasing frequency, rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...

and homicide
Homicide
Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...

.
délit "minor felony, minor indictable offence": intermediate crimes punishable by prison sentences fewere than 10 years; includes theft
Theft
In common usage, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting and fraud...

. Let us also note the délit de fuite — fleeing the scene of an accident with the knowledge that it had resulted in severe bodily harm to other parties or fleeing from the police.
Inamovibilité "security of tenure": judges cannot be removed from office, except through specific disciplinary proceedings (conducted by the National Judicial Council, an independent tribunal), for infringements on their duties. They may be moved or promoted only with their own will. These protections are meant to ensure that they are independent from the executive power.
Jurisprudence While French judges, in the civil law
Civil law (legal system)
Civil law is a legal system inspired by Roman law and whose primary feature is that laws are codified into collections, as compared to common law systems that gives great precedential weight to common law on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different...

tradition, do not create law, and thus there is no case law
Case law
In law, case law is the set of reported judicial decisions of selected appellate courts and other courts of first instance which make new interpretations of the law and, therefore, can be cited as precedents in a process known as stare decisis...

properly said, they may interpret existing statute law, as well as generic principles derived from the French Constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is a fundamental document of the French Revolution, defining the individual and collective rights of all the estates of the realm as universal. Influenced by the doctrine of "natural right", the rights of man are held to be universal: valid...

. In particular, the decisions of the higher courts are of great importance and may establish long-lasting doctrine known as jurisprudence constante. While there is no stare decisis
Stare decisis
Stare decisis is a legal principle by which judges are obliged to respect the precedents established by prior decisions...

rule forcing lower courts to decide according to precedent, they tend to do so in practice with respect to jurisprudence constante.
magistrat "judicial officer": general term encompassing judges (magistrats du siège) and prosecutors (parquet); the magistrature, or "judiciary", is a collective term for all judicial officers. Magistrats are government employees, but statutorily kept separate and independent from the other branches of government. Magistrats are expected to maintain a certain degree of distance (as is the case with all government employees); that is, they must refrain from actions and statements that could hinder their impartiality or make it appear that their impartiality is compromised, e.g., refrain from making public political statements. The Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature, or "National Judicial Academy" in Bordeaux is responsible for educating judges and thereofore only admits French nationals.
ordre administratif "administrative courts, administrative stream": courts of this order judge most cases against the government.
ordre judiciaire "judicial courts, judicial stream": courts of this order judge civil and criminal cases.
Paritaire Regarding certain courts, commissions and other bodies making decisions with respect to two opposed groups of persons, this means that the body contains representatives from the two groups in equal proportion (parity).
parquet "Office of the Prosecutor": responsible for the prosecution of cases. It is headed by the procureur. It requests enquiries to be made; during court hearings, it brings out accusations against the suspect. In addition, it has a role of general monitoring of courts. In the case of an appellate or a cassation court, the parquet is called parquet général. The name parquet means "wooden floor" in French; possible etymologies for the judicial use include the fact that the prosecutors speak from the floor of the courtroom (as opposed to the judges, who are in a higher elevation), and the possible meaning of "small park", alluding to a small enclosure in which attorneys stayed inside the courtroom.
président "presiding justice": chief judge of a division of a court; premier président or President of the Court refers to the Chief Justice.
procureur "public prosecutor": This occupation in the magistrature can be translated into prosecutor
Prosecutor
The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...

, but the functions of the procureur also include the general monitoring of the activity of the court in both criminal and civil cases (say, to see if judges apply the law in a consistent manner). The procureur in a court of appeal or higher court is a procureur général.
Publicité All civil, administrative and criminal justice, as well as all financial cases where individuals may be fined, end up with audiences open to the public. There are narrow exceptions to this requirement: cases involving national security secrets, as well as cases of rape and other sexual attacks, may be closed or partially closed to the public, respectively in order to protect the secret or in order not to add to the pain of the victim. Cases with minor defendants (or rather, defendants that were minor at the time of the crime) are not open to the public and the names of the defendants are not made public, so that they are not stigmatized for life.
siège "Bench": seat of justice and, by extension, the judges sitting on the panel trying the case. The magistrats du siège, or professional judicial career judges, are said to be inamovible, that is, they can not be transferred without their consent.
tribunal: generally refers to a court of record
Court of record
In common law jurisdictions, a court of record is a judicial tribunal having attributes and exercising functions independently of the person of the magistrate designated generally to hold it, and proceeding according to the course of common law, its acts and proceedings being enrolled for a...

of first instance having original jurisdiction
Original jurisdiction
The original jurisdiction of a court is the power to hear a case for the first time, as opposed to appellate jurisdiction, when a court has the power to review a lower court's decision.-France:...

and whose judgments are appeal
Appeal
An appeal is a petition for review of a case that has been decided by a court of law. The petition is made to a higher court for the purpose of overturning the lower court's decision....

able.

"Instance" Courts

There are 297 "tribunal d'instance", inferior courts with jurisdiction over several electoral districts (canton). This courts replaced the old Justice of the Peace Courts in 1958. Suits at this level may take anywhere between 6 to 8 months.

"Grande instance" Courts

The superior Court, or tribunal de grande instance, is the court of general jurisdiction

General jurisdiction

A court of general jurisdiction is one that has the authority to hear cases of all kinds - criminal, civil, family, probate, and so forth.-Courts of general jurisdiction in the United States:All federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. Many U.S...

for civil matters over 10 000 €. Here, litigants are statutorily required to be represented by a lawyer, or avocat. There are 158 mainland French superior courts with at least one per county (département).

Specialist courts

Labor Tribunal (conseil de prud'hommes): hears disputes and suits between employers and employees (apart from cases devoted to administrative courts, see below); the court is said to be paritaire because it is composed of equal numbers of representatives from employer unions, e.g., MEDEF and CGPME, and employee unions.
Land Estate Court (tribunal paritaire des baux ruraux): hears cases dealing with long-term leases for farm land estates.
Social Security Court (tribunal des affaires de sécurité sociale): handles suits welfare and state benefits.
Business Tribunal (tribunal de commerce): hears matters involving trade and business disputes and the panel is elected from the local business community.

Court of Appeal

There are over thirty courts of appeal (cour d'appel) in mainland France with one per province (région). The Court is divided into a number of divisions or courts: social security, business, general civil, and criminal. This is the only court that requires the intervention of a solicitor or case attorney (avoué) to prepare and manage your case and to act as an intermediary between the barrister and the appellant or appellee. Appeals may take anywhere from 18 to 24 months, if not longer.

Supreme Court

The French Supreme Court of Judicature (French: Cour de cassation) is France's court of last resort having jurisdiction over all matters tryable in the judicial stream but only scope of review to determine a miscarriage of justice or certify a question of law based solely on issues of law. The Court is located in the Hall of Justice building in Paris.

The Supreme Court is the court of final appeal for civil and criminal matters. As a judicial court, it does not hear cases involving claims against the government which generally fall within the purview of administrative courts, for which the Council of State acts as the supreme court of appeal. Nor does the Court adjudicate constitutional issues; instead, constitutional review lies solely with the Constitutional Council. Therefore, France does not have one senior court, but four (including the Tribunal of conflicts), and collectively, these four courts form the topmost tier of the court system.

The Supreme Court was established in 1790 under the name Tribunal de cassation during the French Revolution, and its original purpose was to act as a court of error with revisory jurisdiction over lower provincial prerogative courts (Parlements)[1]. However, much about the Court continues the earlier Paris Parlement Court.

Police Court

The Police Court, or tribunal de police, has summary jurisdiction over all finable offences committed by adults, those being misdemeanors or summary offences.

For petty misdemeanors like most traffic violations, suspected offenders may either plea nolo contendere

Nolo contendere

is a legal term that comes from the Latin for "I do not wish to contend." It is also referred to as a plea of no contest.In criminal trials, and in some common law jurisdictions, it is a plea where the defendant neither admits nor disputes a charge, serving as an alternative to a pleading of...

and pay a set fine amount (amende forfaitaire) or contest the charge in court. The court may then find the defendant innocent or guilty, but if found guilty, they are liable to be sentenced a higher fine.

All criminal matters may pass summarily through the Court, but this court has limited original jurisdiction for cases where prison stays are not a possible punishment.

Criminal Court

The Criminal Court, or tribunal correctionnel, has specialist and limited original jurisdiction over most felonies or indictable offences.

Court of Sessions

The Court of Sessions, or cour d'assises, has limited jurisdiction over major felonies or indictable offences with a minimum of 10 year prison sentence, including violent crimes like murder and rape or crimes against the State. This Court is the only one to conduct proceedings in the form of a jury trial, largely due to the severity of the crime.

Juvenile Court

Referred to as tribunal pour enfants, the Court has jurisdiction for most criminal offences being either misdemeanors or minor felonies committed by minors. Cases are tried by bench trial panelled by a single judge.

Appellate courts

Criminal appeals from the Magistrate, central Criminal, or either Juvenile courts are sent to the Criminal Division of the county Court of Appeal. Appeals may then pass to the Supreme Court.

Jurisdictional court

The Jurisdictional Court, or tribunal des conflits, handles conflicts between the civil system of justice and the administrative system of justice. There are two kinds of conflicts:

Positive conflict: both systems consider themselves competent for the same case.
Negative conflict: both systems consider that the other system is competent for the case, resulting in a denial of justice.

In both cases, the tribunal des conflits will render final judgment on which system is competent.

Court of Audit

The financial courts - national Court of Audit (cour des comptes) and regional audit courts (chambres régionales des comptes) - have jurisdiction to try cases involving possible misuse of public funds, and, in some rare instances, of private funds.

They are empowered and mandated by Article 15 of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is a fundamental document of the French Revolution, defining the individual and collective rights of all the estates of the realm as universal. Influenced by the doctrine of "natural right", the rights of man are held to be universal: valid...

which set forth that French citizens have the right to hold public officers, agents, and officials accountable for the finances they oversee and operate. The courts' roles and responsibilities are laid out in the Financial Court Code.

Jurisdiction

The Court of Audit and regional audit courts mostly adjudicate cases regarding public funds, carrying out:

Mandatory audits of public accountants to track national and local government funds.
Discretionary audits of public corporations, publicly subsidized private organizations, and social security and welfare agencies.
Since 1999, audits of private charities who regularly receive public donations.

Neither national or regional audit courts hear cases related to private organizations, with the few exceptions noted here. Instead, financial cases concerning private funds and money fall within the jurisdiction of the civil justice system.

Prior to 1982, France only had a single national Court of Audit. With a push toward decentralization in the creation of province-like administrative regions and the increased role of local elected officials and considering the Court's enormous docket, France saw fit to establish regional audit courts. The national court now deals primarily with the government, public establishments, and (semi-)public companies on a national level, while the regional courts handle the local level. The court may occasionally delegate national-level audits to regional courts, as is often the case with post-secondary educational facilities.

An important concept in the business of the financial courts is the difference between, in French public accountings, between ordonnateurs (managers who order expenses and perception of payments) and payeurs (the public accountants who pay expenses and recoup debts). The Court only judges public accountants; but it may also make observations about the decisions taken by the ordonnateurs, and possibly send them before other courts for mismanagement (see below).

Justice activities

These jurisdictions act as courts in the ordinary sense of the word in
some limited circumstances. That is, they judge the accounting of
public accountants (comptables publics) and may fine them in case
of certain failures:

They may fine public accountants if they are late in handing over their accounting.
They may find that the accountant neglected to collect money owed to the state (or other government) or, through negligence, unduly gave away state (or other government) money. The responsibility of the public accountant in those circumstances is personal and unlimited, meaning that he or she has to refund all lost money. This situation is known as débet (from Latin: "he owes"). Because of the possibility of débet, all public accountants must have external warranty as well as insurance. In practice, many débets grossly exceed the financial means of the public accountants concerned, and the Minister of Finance may end up pardoning the debt (remise gracieuse).
They may find that somebody or some organization did accounting operations on public funds whereas they were not public accountants. In those circumstances, they are found to be de facto
De facto
De facto is a Latin expression that means "concerning fact." In law, it often means "in practice but not necessarily ordained by law" or "in practice or actuality, but not officially established." It is commonly used in contrast to de jure when referring to matters of law, governance, or...

public accountants (comptables de fait) and they face the same constraints and penalties as de jure public accountants.

In addition, the Cour des Comptes supports and provides half of the judges of the Cour de discipline financière et budgétaire (Court of financial and budgetary discipline), the other half being provided by the Conseil d'État. This court tries ordonnateurs — that is, the persons who order expenses and the recovery of debts, and may fine them for undue expenses or for sums that they should have decided to recover. However, the court cannot try government ministers, or (in almost all cases), local elected officials; thus, with few exceptions, the only ordonnateurs that face the court are civil servants.

If the Cour des Comptes or the regional chambers discern criminal behavior in the accounts that they audit, they refer the matter to the appropriate criminal court.

Other activities

Most of the activity of the Cour des Comptes and the regional chambers is not of a judicial kind (juridictionnel); rather, they act as a general auditing system. However, even for these activities, they act with almost complete independence of both the executive and the legislative branches.

The court and chambers may advise, or reprimand, ministries, administrations and public establishments that they audited.

The court and chamber publish a yearly report in which it discusses a selection of misuses of funds and other incidents. In addition, they may also publish specialized reports. The court and chambers are free to inquire on whatever they wish within their field of competency; the court may also be commissioned reports by Parliament.

In all these advisory and publishing activities, the court and chambers do not limit themselves to pure accounting issues, but they also take the efficiency of public services into account. They may, for instance, criticize an expense that was legally ordered and accounted for, but which was inappropriate with respect to criteria of good financial management.

The 2001 Loi d'orientation sur les lois de finances (LOLF, law fixing the framework for budget acts) changed the way budget was passed in France: now, budget is attributed to specific missions, and the efficiency of spending on each mission is to be assessed. In that context, the court's missions will include an increased dose of assessment of efficiency.

External links

Quick description of the French court system

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