Contenu du sommaire : L'identité professionnelle des magistrats

Since 2013, we have been collecting the personal viewpoints of members of the judiciary who have reached the end of their career. Gradually we have built up a body of material that constitutes the living memory of a profession as recounted by its members. Listening to these voices, these "oral archives", constitutes an experience close to an immersion in a professional environment. It gives the listener an intimate understanding of the standards, values and representations that apply in this world. The strength of this oral history is that it reveals the relative autonomy of the people involved, who are integral parts of the organisations but can also profoundly transform them. We get a grasp of what text and the archives do not show: the relations between generations, the forms of solidarity, the concrete experiences and the silent transformations, what the different jobs involve, how their holders experiment with them… This approach allows us "to take seriously the representations and theoretical and practical legitimisations of their actions that individuals construct and allow outsiders to see". It is no exaggeration to say that over this period, in the space of two generations, the justice world has changed more than in the two previous centuries, with the place it has taken in an ever more judicialised society.

The sharing and intergenerational transmission of the professional values is the foundation of the identity of the judiciary, as is shown by the research and analysis of the IERDJ. But the system of shared values and references has evolved over the generations, marked by the great events experienced by each of them. History allows us to identify, from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, five successive generations of the judiciary whose specific features help us to understand in what context those values have been passed on.

This paper offers a key to sociological interpretation of the evolutions which professional magistrates have known during the five preceding decades in France. These evolutions are intricate with those of the judiciary institution. Having pointed out the landmarks over time of these changes, the paper focuses on the oppositional dynamics within the profession which contributed to the development of its professional identity. Indeed, the latter has been thrusted by the dynamics of a series of oppositions, between civil and criminal law, between prosecutors and judges or between sitting magistrates and heads of courts. These dynamics are founded on a common set of values concerning both the judiciary and the profession, promoting a better independence.

As the personal accounts above illustrate, the judiciary, in its two components (judges and prosecutors), has changed more in thirty years than during the two centuries before that. Its current independence is first of all external, that is to say that its relationship with the political authorities is more distanced thanks to the existence of the High Council for the Judiciary (CSM) as an interface. Then it is internal in the sense that the weight of hierarchy, if indeed it subsists in the prosecution service, is less pronounced and has not curbed the creativity of practitioners in the field. Finally, it is cultural, thanks to the role played by a national training school (the ENM), but also by collective bodies (unions and associations), which are the main gelling forces of the professional identity.

In this article, the author, who will be going to China in October and November 2023, to Yunnan in particular, offers a practical examination of the particularities of the way Chinese citizens can access the justice system to settle their conflicts, whether they are civil - what can be called everyday justice - or criminal matters. He highlights the cultural particularities, in particular the importance of mediation and the role of public opinion and cyber vigilantes in sensitive cases. He quotes from numerous accounts by Chinese sources.

This article is intended as a follow-up to the dossier published in issue 2023/3 of Les Cahiers de la justice entitled "Neurosciences in the justice system: for what uses?” and is inspired by it. It describes how judges find themselves in a situation where neuroscience can be a valuable source of information and an aid to their action, although at the same time they must guard against the risk of stupefaction as well as any inhibitions.

Over the past few decades, there has been an increasing reliance on negotiation outcomes based on the accused's confession or consent to end the case before the trial in Anglo-American countries. Surprisingly, this trend has also affected Western European jurisdictions influenced by the inquisitorial system. This convergence reflects the vanishing trial phenomenon, where legal proceedings are shortened to promote efficiency, leading to the decline of traditional trials. Today's criminal law seems to have become a hybrid system incorporating elements from both methods. Our article argues that there is a growing trend of prematurely using the accused's confession or consent to end trials through negotiated outcomes with the prosecution. We raise the question of whether this practice, including plea-bargaining and other abbreviated trial alternatives, resembles medieval practices where confession is often prioritised over the pursuit of truth. We explore the risks and opportunities associated with the methods arising from the vanishing trial phenomenon that enhances the status of confession. In the first part, we trace the historical development of confession to grasp its contemporary significance. We explore how these methods have evolved from the Middle Ages to the present day, examining the relationship between confession, torture and the concept of truth. In the second part, we analyse the current situation regarding confession and the emergence of multidoor courtrooms, highlighting the potential downsides of this phenomenon. Finally, we emphasise the need for an appropriate approach to address the excesses associated with this trend and ensure the respect of fundamental principles of a fair trial for both defendants and victims.

Restorative justice, also sometimes known as "reparative justice" (justice réparatrice) in France, is beginning to become more widespread in France since it was first enshrined in the law in 2014, but also in particular since the recent release of a film directed by Jeanne Herry, Je verrai toujours vos visages2. This article provides an overview of this form of justice which entered French law in 2014. It also tells the story of one person's experience of a "restorative justice conference" outside the institutional framework which gave rise to the creation of an association.

This article is a commentary of a Netflix series devoted to the defamation case brought by Johnny Depp against his ex-wife Amber Heard and the trial held in the Virginia court at the Fairfax County Courthouse from 11 April to 1 June 2022. Taking an ethnographic-inspired approach based on concepts espoused by sociologist Ervin Goffman, he deciphers the footage of the trial itself, in particular the behaviour of the actors "on stage" and "in the wings", the ubiquity of social media, the role of the judge and the meaning of the jury's verdict.

The article analyzes, from the perspective law and literature, a small youth book by Emmanuel Carrère devoted to uchrony in the literary and political fields ; An analysis of the problem of retroactivity of the judicial decision is also proposed which identifies, also in the legal field, the typical elements of the uchronistic narration in the sentence.

The insult "Mort aux vaches !" (Death to cows!) entered the French language thanks to Crainquebille. The brevity and simplicity of Anatole France's story have no doubted helped earn it a wide audience. What are less well-known, however, are the close links between Crainquebille and the Dreyfus cause, Anatole France having been a staunch supporter of Dreyfus. Fiction has a part to play in the overall process of anchoring the notion of the Republic in the public's mind. By doing this, Crainquebille constitutes a political soundbox echoing the writer's personal commitments, for instance as a founder of the Human Rights League in 1898.