Contenu du sommaire : De la critique du capitalisme à la réalisation de la démocratie par le droit ?

When Law Met Politics: The Critical Legal Movement in France in the 1970s The aim of this paper is to analyse the origins, the development, and the long-term impact of the Critical Legal Movement (mouvement “Critique du droit”). Created some thirty years ago, this movement resulted from the collective mobilization of legal experts and political scientists across French cities. Referring mainly to Marxist theories, the Critical Legal Movement argued that law is deeply embedded in its social and political context, and should thus be analyzed through an interdisciplinary approach. Building on this critical perspective, the movement developed a scientific project and teaching methods, which both differed from and opposed the way in which law was traditionally taught and studied in French law schools. The movement itself no longer exists; nevertheless, it had far-reaching consequences on the study of law. Indeed, the Critical Legal Movement was an opportunity to successfully explore alternative teaching methods and to create high quality research institutions. Activism – Activist lawyers – Criticism – Law and politics – Law reform – Law studies – Marxism – 1970s.

Summary Is Juridical Classification Consistent with Political Activism? Dilemmas and Ironies in the Drop-in-Law Clinic of an Antiracism Association This paper deals with the concrete activities of the drop-in-law clinic of a French antiracism association. Juridical classification does not correspond to the syllogistic model; instead it operates within the bind of needing to support the victim while adhering to the demands of juridical realism. Political activists use evaluative criteria which help them to make their decisions and to accept these choices. Social movements using legal mobilization developing a militant legality must combine activism and realism.

Mobilizing Law: Origin and Fabric of the Genevan Partnership Law This article focuses on practical situations leading to a demand for rights and underlying mobilizations in the call for a law's promulgation. In this investigation, the demand for rights was viewed as an activity, on the one hand, since it is drawn from interactions and local situations, and, on the other hand, law was considered as a resource used by actors seeking to acquire recognition of, and for, new rights. The singular story of a gay couple that, via an ad hoc collective, configured and carried a cause, the first Swiss partnership law, all the way to legislative proceedings in Geneva provides an illustrative example for further reflection on the mobilization of law. Collective action – Mobilization of law – Politics of homosexuality.

Summary “Govern Work Through Legislation”. Workplace Conflicts and the Struggle for Law in a Shanghai Enterprise (2003-2007) The development of China's “socialist market economy” has been accompanied by a significant legislative project in order to develop the institutional frameworks necessary for market transactions. The result is pro-market legislation whose development is encouraged by the initiatives of “actors interested in the market.” This set of laws also affected workplace relations with the development of rules seeking to establish a contractual agreement between employers and employees. After having examined the emergence of this legal basis for trade, this article envisages the manner in which the workers of one Shanghai enterprise mobilized this law during collective conflicts in 2003 and 2007. This case-study illustrates the impact of the law in the social struggles and reveals a dimension of “institutional learning” by the workers from one conflict to the next.

Summary Defining the Work and Ethic(s) of “Neighborhood Judges”. Conceptions of the Vocation Beyond the Standardization of Recruitment The standardization of recruitment practices for juges de proximité (neighborhood judges) has been accompanied by a huge influx of legal professionals. While this process has helped to bring these non-professional judges more into line with career magistrates, this should not give rise to assumptions of greater homogeneity in the working practices and professional identities of juges de proximité. Analysis reveals that life trajectories have a strong bearing on the skills possessed at the outset of a “career” and they become differentiated by the subjective reasons for, and by the means of, becoming a juge de proximité. Based on an ideal-type of the neighborhood justice system, the author highlights two polar opposite professional identities: the conciliatory, pedagogical, and “equitable” judge versus the “legal professional specialist.”

Summary Critical Systems Theory Besides their skepticism about universal reason and universal morality, the Frankfurt Schools of Critical Systems Theory and Critical Theory share the following basic assumptions: the thinking in societal-systemic, institutional concepts, which transcend simple reciprocal relations by dint of their complexity; the assumption that society is based on fundamental paradoxes, antagonisms, antinomies; the strategy to conceptualize justice as a contingent and transcendental formula; the form of immanent (and not morality based, external) critique as an attitude of transcendence; the aim of societal (and not only political) emancipation in an “association of free individuals” (Marx). The article conceptualizes a critical turnaround of autopoietic systems theory.

Summary From Social to Criminal Sentence. The Autonomy of French Professional Football Between Arbitrariness and Arbitration Based on French professional football's most sensational scandal of the '70s, this article aims at showing how fraudulent practices covered by public law have all the more chance of being categorized as “criminal” under penal law since they threaten the autonomy of the field in which they operate. The scandal surrounding secret business funds reveals the most structuring mechanisms for preserving both social and economic regulation in France's unique professional football sector. It also exposes the balance of political and juridical tensions between sportive and governmental authorities dealing with the ability of saying and making “professionalism” in France.