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A century ago, in the United States, as with the Free Law Movement in Continental Europe and under the influence of evolutionism and the pragmatic trend in philosophy, the question was raised of how law changea and was brought up-to-date. As their European colleagues, the American authors asking this question revolted against prevailing formalism and put forward a different view of the role of judges. Two tendencies were to develop which are known today as the sociological jurisprudence school and the American realist movement. What form takes the rule scepticism which is supposed to be theirs ? Were they nihilistic, as they are massively accused of ? What unites and what divides them ? What are their thesis on the interpretation of precedents and the interpretation of the Constitution — the main problem at the time was that of judicial review of acts of legislation ? What is their influence on contemporary American doctrine and what questions do they suggest to today's theoretician ?

In Europe civil procedure traditionally revolves around the individual and hence it is often ill-suited to our consumer society with its extended group relationships and the ever-growing number of contracts involving smallsums. This state of affairs led the legislative authorities in Quebec to instigate in 1978 the procedure known as « recours collectif » (class action) which enables an individual, on obtaining the court's assent, to introduce an action whereby the rights of others in his position may be jointly defended. He need not be granted the power of attorney, it is sufficient that the others do no dissociate themselves from the action. The author investigates the numerous procedural questions and implications arising both in the light of the Quebec experiment and with reference to a project drafted by the French commission on the reform of consumer law.

Satellites and cable networks will create a European and world-wide market for multifunctional telecommunication. One of the many programs and services offered to the public will be national broadcasting which is not any longer protected by state monopoly. In order to adapt it to the forthcoming international compétition, new legislation is authorizing private programs which will compete with the existing public programs. However, continental constitutional courts require legal provisions which ensure that national broadcasting is reflecting the country's political, social and cultural pluralism. Such an obligation renders more difficult the financing of broadcasting on the national and international market. It should therefore, according to the equal protection clause, not be imposed on private broadcasters to the same extent as on public broadcasters who are subsidized by a public fee on radio and television sets. As this public fee will in the long run lose its justification with the public's turning to private programs, it will be necessary to subsidize indiscriminately public and private broadcasters to the extent to which they distribute films and other audiovisual products not being profitable because of their national character or their high cultural standard.

The constitutional partition of legislative competences between the federal state (civil and commercial law) and the cantons (judiciary and civil procédure) raises for the swiss lawyer the awkward problem of the relationship between substantive and formai law. The federal lawmaker and the federal Supreme Court's practice draw between the two a borderline which does not cease to evolve to the prejudice of cantonal procedure. Indeed the latest should not impede the uniform implementation of fédéral law, the infringements of which are getting more and more numerous. The author's purpose is to describe these infringements and to question the main relationships between substantive law and procedure through the particularly abundant case-law, often bewildering to the foreign lawyer.