Activity report 2021-2022 of the Cour de cassation #France

Prime Minister,

The Court of Cassation thanks you for your presence at our solemn back-to-school hearing, while the health crisis, this year again, occupies our minds and upsets our organizations. However, we remain resolutely confident in the future, to meet the numerous challenges of the new year which is about to begin.

Mr. Keeper of the Seals,

We would also like to thank you for your presence today, in the very special context that we are experiencing.

Our jurisdiction, despite the concerns that remain, intends to keep its commitments and welcome you in the best possible conditions.

Madam President of the Law Commission of the National Assembly,

Mr. Chairman of the Senate Law Commission,

Mr President of the Constitutional Council,

Mr. Vice-President of the Council of State, the Court of Cassation welcomes your appointment and wishes you every success in your new duties; there is no doubt that the nourished relations and the fruitful dialogue that the Court of Cassation maintains with the Council of State will be further enriched in the future;

Mr President of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Court of Cassation is happy and very honored to welcome you as guest of honor, particularly at the start of 2022 which marks the beginning of the presidency. French of the Council of the European Union. The Court of Cassation is pleased with the quality of the dialogue that unites our two courts and intends to continue its action to recall the essential role of national judges in the defense of fundamental rights and the preservation of the essential values ​​of the rule of law, alongside of the two European courts. I personally look forward to your forthcoming participation in the Conference that we are co-organizing with the Council of State and the Constitutional Council, which will bring together all the Supreme Courts of the European Union on 21 February,^th  anniversary of the Court of Justice of the Union and to discuss the role of judges in consolidating the rule of law.

Ladies and gentlemen, the first presidents, presidents and attorneys general of the Supreme Courts, I welcome your presence and thank you for the richness of our discussions, many despite the difficulties caused by the health crisis. I attach crucial importance to the dialogue between judges, even more so in the current context of rising individualism and national withdrawal.

Mr President of the European Court of Human Rights, your presence at this back-to-school hearing attests to the high quality of the relations between our two courts, to which I am very attached as you know;

Madam Defender of Rights,

Mr. First President of the Court of Auditors,

Madam Attorney General at the Court of Auditors,

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the Superior Council of the Judiciary,

Mr. Chairman of the Committee for the Estates General of Justice,

Mr. President of the Bar Association at the Council of State and at the Court of Cassation,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Dear colleagues,

 

Mireille Delmas-Marty alerts us to the fact that the world is caught in a whirlwind of headwinds which are all challenges that we must face: terrorism, migratory movements, climate change, digital revolution, social, economic and financial crises, pandemic.

These upheavals, of varying nature and intensity, are intensifying and accelerating, weakening our democracies, all of which are mobilized to fight not to be swept away by this vortex.

Sensitive to his analysis, I wish, on the occasion of this solemn audience, to formulate a wish: that of finding a goal together; to redefine a horizon, to restore meaning and coherence to our actions, to our responsibilities.

We must draw on our creativity, “the living source of our humanity”, to use the words of this eminent jurist. And like the best sailors: stay tuned to the winds and currents, while keeping the compass firmly in hand, to take the safest route and stay on course.

During these years, I enthusiastically carried out overall reforms to enable the Court of Cassation to adapt to changes in its legal, institutional and international environment, and to give it the means to respond to the challenges its own: ensuring equal access to justice for all citizens, guaranteeing them quality justice, strengthening the openness of the Court of Cassation, and taking a new digital step.

The activity of the Court of Cassation in 2021 was particularly sustained, as illustrated in the brochure made available to you.

I would like to say how much everyone’s intense participation in the many working groups set up and led by the Court of Cassation has been beneficial to our work. I am thinking of the magistrates and civil servants and all the teams of the Court of Cassation , the magistrates of the courts of appeal and the judicial courts; but also to the Advocates, whom I warmly welcome. All have contributed, through their individual and collective participation, to revitalizing the life of the Court; to make it more visible, more readable and to establish a tremendous synergy between and with all the lower courts.

I would also like to salute the constant involvement of the presidents of chambers, the deans and the magistrates of the Court, both in their primary, jurisdictional office, and in the cross-cutting projects, led by the Court and in which they have invested tremendously. Finally, I would like to thank the Attorney General and all the magistrates of the General Prosecutor’s Office for the high quality of our exchanges, which are always constructive, and the fruitful work undertaken together, in respect of each person’s office.

Allow me a word on these projects.

 

The Court of Cassation now directs appeals to three differentiated circuits and an emergency circuit, thus making it possible to accommodate all appeals lodged by litigants, while adapting the processing time of each case to the complexity of the issues. legal and societal issues it raises.

At the same time, and because means other than strictly contentious must be offered to litigants to settle a dispute, the year 2021 will also have been that of the consecration of the use of mediation up to cassation. The regulatory changes that we have formulated to make mediation at the Court more readable and structured, should find a favorable outcome. I have good reason to believe, with already a successful mediation and another in progress, that they will soon find a concrete application.

The accessibility and openness of the Court in 2021 also resulted in the making available to the public of the decisions of the Court of Cassation. A first digital step has just been taken. Open dat was born on October 1 , 2021, thanks to the new ^Judilibre search engine, developed by young and brilliant data scientists from the Court of Cassation. Thus, more than 480,000 anonymised decisions of the Court are accessible online. Another major advance is being prepared: the civil decisions (social and commercial) of the 36 courts of appeal will in turn be made available to the public in April 2022. The advent of this Open Justiceis the fruit of a very structured work which mobilized many players from the Court of Cassation, but also from the Chancellery, the courts of appeal and our various institutional partners. I would like to renew my heartfelt thanks to them for the progress made in just a few months, and I know that I can count on them for all that still remains to be accomplished.

Open access to court decisions, in a context of digitization of exchanges, will have a considerable influence on the act of judging and on our working methods. It should lead us to increasingly promote the search for quality by using the tools of the 21st century, without renouncing legal debates during collegial hearings.

In this regard, I would like to mention the proposals formulated in the very rich report of the Commission for prospective reflection “Court of Cassation 2030”, responsible for imagining the Court of Cassation of tomorrow.

The Commission was guided by one objective: to clarify and consolidate the role of the Court of Cassation, both at the heart of the judicial institution but also in a society that respects democratic values ​​and the rule of law. Once again, I thank President André Potocki and the members of the Commission for their remarkable commitment. The 37 recommendations made continue to feed our thoughts and some of them are part of the ongoing reforms.

Thus, since 1 ^January 2022, in order to reinforce the transversality of the Court’s working methods, advisers can now sit in another Chamber on the occasion of an appeal raising legal questions common to several Chambers.

Similarly, the Court of Cassation’s dialogue with the courts of appeal, a major focus of the policy I have been conducting since 2019, has been consolidated. I warmly thank the first presidents who responded with enthusiasm and conviction to our proposals. We have thus set up senior magistrates within the Court of Cassation in each section of the chamber, who are the direct interlocutors of the senior magistrates whom the first presidents, for their part, set up in their court of appeal. An essential vehicle for reciprocal exchanges between the Court of Cassation and the Courts of Appeal, these magistrates make it possible to strengthen our links with the aim of identifying the methodological needs of the Courts of Appeal or even the emerging or serial disputes to which it is important that the Court of Cassation can provide a targeted response.

This strengthening of relations between the Court of Cassation and the lower courts, particularly in terms of methodological support, would not be effective without the support of the National School for the Judiciary. Here I salute the Director of the School and all the teaching teams for the excellence of the teaching provided to court auditors and magistrates, but also to the many other players in the judicial institution, which are for example magistrates exercising on a temporary basis, consular judges or industrial tribunal advisers.

 

Other recommendations of the “Court of Cassation 2030” Commission are the subject of rich discussions within the Court: I am thinking of the “open interactive procedure” which would make it possible to open an exceptional debate on certain “flagship cases”; I am still thinking of the creation of an observatory of judicial disputes which would reflect great progress for litigants, within the framework of the Court’s age-old mission: to guarantee equal treatment for everyone before judges.

As you can see, through these few non-exhaustive illustrations, the Court has already undergone profound reform and this dynamic continues.

With its internal reforms, its new working methods, its strengthened links with the trial courts, the Court of Cassation is resolutely part of the movement which should allow it to keep up with the times, up to the expectations of litigants such as of the legal community.

Because it is important to do but also to make known, the Court of Cassation is also committed to making itself better known.

Communication, transparency and clarity are indeed essential to restore the confidence of litigants in the judicial institution. The communication of the judicial institution must be that of its time, social networks and new information media. It cannot develop without a very high level of ethics and without the information being accompanied by a didactic explanation.

The establishment of spokespersons with the heads of courts and the judicial tribunals of group I could, in this respect, be tested.

It is exactly in this sense that the CSM expressed itself in its opinion delivered to the President of the Republic last June. In this regard, I would particularly like to thank all of its members for their vigilance in safeguarding the independence of the judiciary and their involvement in the active management of the judges’ human resources.

The Court of Cassation has developed new tools: letters from the chambers, which offer an educational focus on recent case law; a new website that is more intuitive and geared towards the litigant; the translation of emblematic judgments to promote our case-law beyond borders, short videos on the professions of the Court, podcasts on case-law; so many initiatives and new creations that contribute to communication that is both targeted and broadened, demanding and clear.

It is also essential for the Court of Cassation to communicate with its foreign counterparts, in order to make its case law and its working methods better known and to learn from the experiences of other countries. On the occasion of numerous meetings, I was able to observe that despite different legal systems, our Supreme Courts are faced with common challenges: loss of confidence of litigants in justice, challenges linked to technological innovations, issues linked to communication, ethics or the independence of justice.

Through dialogue and the pooling of our respective experiences, we manage to improve our practices, our law, in the interest of litigants.

***

This retrospective should not, however, make us forget what I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks: drawing on our resources and our creativity to find meaning and coherence in our actions.

Because justice is at the heart of society, at the heart of citizens’ lives, connected to everything that surrounds it, it is in direct contact with the profound changes that are at work, so that the judicial landscape has also undergone a profound transformation in the space of a few decades.

This is evidenced by the changes in the nature of legal actions, not only in the economic and social field, but also for disputes that affect the daily lives of citizens. These disputes are subject to the effects of globalization, due to the interdependence of economies, flows of information and data, on a global scale, which it induces. Thus, the same causes producing the same effects, disputes of the same nature arise all over the world, concerning service platforms or even health or environmental actions.

At the same time, globalization, favored by unprecedented technological changes and the opening of markets, has led to an evolution of social and economic relations and profoundly modified the legal landscape. If the effects of globalization are often relayed, those of globalization, which promote competition within the framework of active competition and lead to withdrawal into oneself as well as the prevalence of personal interests over collective interests, remain less known. This phenomenon of globalization conditions new relationships with law and justice.

Also, justice, sensitive to all these winds, aware of their strength but also of their weakness, because the winds turn, must adapt to better control them.

Who would have imagined in 2019 that a virus born in one part of the world would spread in record time to the whole planet with exceptional consequences in the field of research of course, but also for economies, education , recreation and of course justice.

This pandemic has illustrated the chain of effects, beyond borders and has demonstrated our strong individual and collective resilience capacities. This burst, which some may have doubted, brings hope. It is proof that we can act, with courage and audacity, in order to change the course of things and give meaning to our missions, carried by our commitment, our values ​​and our convictions , even if I measure that obstacles poorly anticipated, can slow down the movement of transformation.

I believe, in fact, that our collective awareness conceals an immense potential for evolution, a treasure of energy from which we can draw with both hands to build the justice of tomorrow.

Let us keep in mind the words of Françoise Tulkens: “justice is the horizon of the law” and the law is the foundation of the democratic life of any society.

In this solemn return to school, when, through the voices of the youngest players in the judicial institution, concerns and deep unease have been expressed, I remember an article by a contemporary philosopher who invited us to think about the justice as a principle of a global system that regulates the totality of a society. However, if this society is experiencing a crisis of its justice, if citizens and justice actors express a feeling of injustice, then it is urgent to build a new theory of justice. We must hear this warning signal, and above all respond to it, in conscience.

What world, what society, what justice, do we wish to bequeath to today’s youth and to future generations? Last year, I appealed to the judge of tomorrow.

I am speaking today in particular to the young magistrates as well as to the young clerks who will bring the justice of tomorrow to life:

You have chosen one of the most beautiful professions there is. You are alerting us to the loss of meaning of a function that you have chosen, but which no longer corresponds to your ideal of justice. You have not taken the wrong path.

Cicero asked what employment is nobler and more precious to the State than that of the man who instructs the rising generation. It seems crucial to me to question ourselves about the transmission of knowledge and the support that the judicial institution will provide to the younger generations. It is up to all of us to no longer have sectoral approaches but to have a global approach, a vision, the direction I mentioned, and know where to go based on the objectification of our needs.

One of the recurring difficulties of reforms is that the changes mentioned, which are constantly evolving, are rarely anticipated, or identified too late. From then on, we undergo them more than we accompany them or go beyond them.

However, it is necessary to undertake an in-depth change in order to achieve a major reform of the judicial system thanks to real long-term governance: expected role of the judge and scope of his intervention, local justice and specialized justice, place of human in our organizations and dematerialization, harmonization of practices and consideration of specificities, modernization and securing of information systems, transparency, readability, clarity of decisions rendered, concentration around the needs of litigants and the search for excellence, reasonable deadlines, all known objectives that we must now and urgently achieve.

We can find solutions if, as I have been saying consistently for many years, we put an end to the pointillism of approaches, if we unite energies in the service of a global, forward-looking and shared vision of the justice of tomorrow.

I express the hope that the reflections undertaken within the framework of the Estates General of Justice, for which I once again salute the Chairman of the Committee, Mr Jean-Marc Sauvé, will contribute to forging the guidelines of an overall project for justice .

In 2019, on the occasion of the formal back-to-school hearing of the Paris Court of Appeal, when I was already observing a gap that continues to grow between judges and civil society, I I asked the following question: is justice so difficult to reform?

 

I do not believe that. I never believed him. And even today I remain convinced that we have the resources to achieve this. “Let us have maximum ambition for justice”, advocated a law professor a few years ago, “because justice is the condition of social harmony”.

What we have accomplished at the Court of Cassation, all together, will make it possible to prepare its future, so that our institution occupies its full place, its rightful place, in this balance of powers, an essential condition for a harmonious and efficient democracy, such as than what we want for future generations.

We need to go further. Because thinking about the future is already building it.

Attorney General, you have the floor

(…)

I thank all the participants for their presence and wish them a happy new year 2022, hoping that it offers everyone all the satisfaction, personal and professional.

The health context prevents us from organizing a moment of conviviality and we sincerely regret it.

I ask all the participants to kindly remain in place for a few more moments in order to allow me to accompany, together with the Attorney General, the Prime Minister, the Keeper of the Seals as well as Mr and Mrs the Presidents of the Committees of the laws of the Senate and of the National Assembly.