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French Legal Research: Courts

Judicial Authority

Judicial authority is established by Title VIII of the Constitution (English - unofficial translation). As France is a civil law jurisdiction, the Nouveau code de procédure civile states that a judge adjudicates for the instant case and there is no precedent established. According to Article 5 of the Nouveau code de procédure civile:

Le juge doit se prononcer sur tout ce qui est demandé et seulement sur ce qui est demandé.

However, in reality, there has been a growing body of case law from French courts. Therefore, when performing French legal research, examining case law is a required step.

There are several areas to become familiar with when looking at French case law, including the jurisdiction of various courts, information about those courts and the codes related to legal procedure and court organization.

Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction of courts in France is divided between l'ordre administratif, or administrative courts, and l'ordre judicaire, or ordinary courts. L'ordre administratif courts, part of the executive branch of government, handle administrative disputes. L'ordre judicaire courts, decide both civil and criminal cases, unless the state, a state employee or a corporation is involved. If so, the case proceeds to l'ordre administratif.

L'ordre judicaire courts are broken down into the tribunal d'instance and the tribunal de grande instance which both handle civil cases; and the tribunal de police and, for more serious cases, tribunal correctionnel, which have jurisdiction over criminal cases.

Appeals for all cases are heard by the cour d'appel, with criminal cases refered by the cour d'appel to the cour d'assises.

The court of last resort for l'ordre judicaire is the cour de cassation, and for l'ordre administratif, it is the Conseil d'État.

To resolve any conflicts over the jurisdiction of these two sets of courts, there is the tribunal des conflicts, which, along with the Conseil constitutionnel, lies outside of the adminstratif/judicaire division.

For a more detailed look at how the court system is structured, refer to:

French Courts

As almost all French case reports are produced by commercial publishers, not many decisions are available full-text on the Internet. However, information about the following courts and the French judicial system is available on the Internet:

Courts

Keep in mind the other sources of French case law.  Print court reporters are available in the International Legal Studies section of the Harvard Law School Library.

Like other jurisdictional materials at ILS, court reporters are arranged under the Moody classification system. To search for a court reporter on HOLLIS catalog, simply use a "call number - other" search. For French court reporters, the command is "find co fra 5XX", where "5" signifies the type of material, i.e. a court reporter, and "XX" is replaced by the Moody subject of the court reporter desired.

For example, if the search is for a reporter for a French administrative court, according to the Moody system, the subject number for administrative law is "67". So, the search for this court reporter would be "find co fra 567". The results of this search will list the court reporters for administrative courts which are located at ILS. A list of the numerous subjects with the corresponding two digit number is provided in the Moody Guide.

Please ask the ILS Reference Staff if you need further explanation or assistance.

Court System

Codes of Procedure and Court Organization

Also, see the Codes section of this guide for additional sources of French procedural codes.