Judiciary of France - Glossary of Key Terms

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 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, 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 to defend them, and that this attorney should have access to the prosecution files. Another implications is that trials in absentia (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 and homicide.
• délit "minor felony, minor indictable offence": intermediate crimes punishable by prison sentences fewere than 10 years; includes theft. 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 tradition, do not create law, and thus there is no precedent or case law 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. 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 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, 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 or a avocat 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 of first instance having original jurisdiction and whose judgments are appealable.