French judiciary courts

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In France the jurisdictions of the ordre judiciaire, of the French court system
are empowered to try either litigation between persons (civil law) or criminal
law cases. They may intervene:

 in the matter of contention in litigation

between persons
 in the domaine gracieux (when the jurisdiction
is asked to authorize something, a change
of marital status for example)
On an exceptional basis the judiciary may also become involved in certain
litigation between an individual and the State or some other public person.
Such litigation would include matters of expropriation, for example, where
the expropriated party does not agree with the indemnification amount.
Traffic accidents in which one of the vehicles belongs to the government
would also fall under the jurisdiction of this court, as well, in this instance,
as that of the juge civil, who also has the power to act; another example
would be a case when the propriety of a contrôle d'identité is contested and
needs to be determined.

Contents

 1Legal context
 2Evolution since the French Revolution
 3First-degree civil jurisdictions
o 3.1Social jurisdictions
o 3.2Commercial jurisdictions
o 3.3Jurisdictions of Sécurité sociale and of aid
sociale
o 3.4Civil juvenile jurisdiction
 4First Degree Penal Jurisdictions
o 4.1First-degree jurisdictions d'instruction
o 4.2First-degree jurisdictions de jugement
o 4.3First-degree jurisdictions for penalty
application
o 4.4Military jurisdictions
o 4.5Juvenile criminal jurisdictions
 5Appeal jurisdictions
o 5.1Court of Appeal
o 5.2Tribunal supérieur d'appel
o 5.3Juridictions criminelles d'appel
 o 5.4Rétention de sûreté
o 5.5Cour nationale de l'incapacité et de la
tarification de l'assurance des accidents du
travail
 6High jurisdiction - Court of Cassation
 7See also
 8Notes and references

Legal context[edit]
Two degrés de juridiction, (degrees of jurisdiction), often exist in French law:

 One jurisdiction where the facts of the

matter are judged For example, in penal
law: did the defendant in fact do what he is
accused of?
 The other jurisdiction is law. For example,
also in penal law: if the defendant did do
that, what legal rules apply?
The Court of Cassation hears appeals of the verdicts rendered by the courts
of the above two jurisdictions. The Court of Cassaction itself only judges
matters of law; it does not re-try the facts a third time.
The French legal system distinguishes between

 civil jurisdictions charged with litigation

between persons, and
 penal jurisdictions, which judge accusations
of criminality and may apply sanctions
pénales, criminal penalties.

Evolution since the French Revolution[edit]

The organization of the French judiciary was first addressed by the loi des
16 et 24 août 1790, (law of August 16 and 24 1790), which established
the justices de paix, (justices of the peace), as well as the tribunaux de
districts, (district tribunals). The justices and the tribunaux served in turn as
courts of first instance, (première instance) and appeal courts, in rotation.
The same law also provided for tribunaux de commerce, commercial
tribunals.
For criminal and penal matters, tribunaux criminels (criminal tribunals),
which included a jury, were created.
The  Constitution of the Year VIII reorganized the court system. It retained the
justices of the peace but separated the courts of first instance from the
appeal tribunals, which would become the appeal courts.
The first juridictions de prud'hommes were created in 1806. In penal
matters, judgment by a jury is reserved for crimes, a serious crime
punishable by ten years or more in prison.
In 1958, justices of the peace were eliminated and replaced by
the tribunaux d'instance, tribunaux de police, and the tribunaux de grande
instance (also tribunaux correctionnels). Les juridictions de proximité were
introduced in 2002, but were scheduled to be eliminated starting January 1,
2013.

First-degree civil jurisdictions[edit]

Organization of the French judiciary for civil matters.

The first-degree civil jurisdiction is so specific that it may be divided into

several subjects areas (commercial, social, rural, etc.). These courts then
have the deciding word in those subjects.
Other first-degree civil jurisdictions have a more general purview, but are
divided by the taux de ressort, most often as the applicant requests.
This is the case in the following jurisdictions:

 Tribunal de grande instance

 Tribunal d'instance
 Juridiction de proximité
Where litigation is not specifically assigned by legislation to another
jurisdiction, the tribunal de grande instance is responsible for litigation on
matters involving more than 10 €000. But for litigation arising from real
estate, the tribunal d'instance has authority over litigation evaluated where
potential damages range between 4 €000 and €10,000, and the juridiction
de proximité for litigation evaluated at 4 000 € or less.
In the overseas French possessions (collectivités d'outre-mer), naming
sometimes differs from this pattern and a court of first instance (tribunal de
première instance) exercises a general review power over first-degree civil
jurisdiction.
The Agricultural land tribunals are responsible for some types of rural
litigation.
Social jurisdictions[edit]
Commercial jurisdictions[edit]
Jurisdictions of Sécurité sociale and of aid sociale[edit]
Civil juvenile jurisdiction[edit]
The juge des enfants (juvenile judge), according to Article 151-3 of the Code
de l'organisation judiciaire, may rule in any matter that concerns
educational assistance measures under the conditions specified at Article
375.[1]

First Degree Penal Jurisdictions[edit]

Organization of the French judiciary for criminal matters.

There are two categories of criminal jurisdiction:

jurisdictions d'instruction and the jurisdictions de jugement. This
distinction is notably echoed by the Code de procédure pénale, (Code of
Penal Procedure), which nevertheless does not define how to distinguish
the one from the other. The distinction is even more nuanced to make,
since in French procedural law the "judgment" jurisdictions also have
powers of investigation (d'instruction).
A jurisdiction d'instruction has powers of criminal investigation and can
proceed or cause to proceed different investigations: it can hear witnesses
and civil parties (parties civiles), search, seal, appoint and expert, put a
suspect in temporary detention or in detention under judiciary supervision,
and rule on the different questions that arise in the course of criminal
investigation, such as the return of seized assets.
A judge in a court de jugement has the same powers, but generally makes
only limited use of them, since the juge d'instruction has already done so.
The essential function of a cour de judgement is to determine the guilt of
defendants under criminal law and to sentence those it finds guilty.
Penal jurisdictions judge infractions, and they also determine the civil
consequences of committing the infraction.
First-degree jurisdictions d'instruction[edit]
This section is empty. You
can help by adding to
it. (February 2019)

First-degree jurisdictions de jugement[edit]

The tribunal de police judges contraventions. The tribunal
correctionnel judges délits. The cour d'assises and the criminal tribunal (in
Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon) judge crimes, according to where they were
committed. The commercial maritime tribunal is a jurisdiction
d'exception, but it has been composed in the same way as jurisdictions of
common law such as the correctional tribunal since the decision of the
constitutional council of July 2, 2010.
First-degree jurisdictions for penalty application[edit]
The juge de l'application des peines and the tribunal de l'application des
peines decide the application of criminal penalties, especially with respect
to prisoners.
Eight regional jurisdictions for rétention de sûreté decide matters of
retention, after their periods of incarceration, of persons found guilty of
certain serious offences and who are adjudged to still be dangerous.
Military jurisdictions[edit]
The elimination of the tribunal aux armées de Paris, the last peacetime
military tribunal, was announced for 2011, when they were to be replaced
by the common-law correctional tribunal.[2] It took effect 1 January 2012 as
a result of the law of 13 December 2011.
Juvenile criminal jurisdictions[edit]
Infractions committed by a minor are judged, depending on their severity
and also the age of the minor, by the juge des enfants, by the tribunal pour
enfants or by the Cour d'assises des mineurs.

Appeal jurisdictions[edit]
Court of Appeal in Aix-en-Provence.

Court of Appeal[edit]
The Court of Appeal retries the facts of a disputed case previously tried in a
court of first instance. This is known as the double degree of jurisdiction
(double degré de juridiction).
At the Court of Appeal level litigation is considered by a single court—
although in separate divisions—whether the matter is civil or criminal.
Depending on the volume of appeals the number of divisions may vary.
There is always, however, at least one civil division, social division,
commercial division, and correctional appeals division.
There are a total of 36 courts of appeal on French territory.
At the courts of appeal, in criminal law matters:

 the chambre de l'instruction is the appeal

court's jurisdiction d'instruction;
 the chambre des appels correctionnels is the
jurisdiction judgement d'appel,
concerning délits and contraventions. For a
contravention the case is heard by a single
judge.
 the chambre de l'application des peines is
an appeal jurisdiction for matters of
sentencing, particularly if a loss of liberty is
involved.
Tribunal supérieur d'appel[edit]
Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon has a tribunal supérieur d'appel [fr], which hears the
appeals from that jurisdiction.[3]
Juridictions criminelles d'appel[edit]
Since the 2000 Loi sur la présomption d'innocence [fr], known as the loi Guigou,
a special form of d'appeal (called "tournant") been available against
the arrêts of the Assises court, and the Criminal and Army tribunals:
appeals are heard in a different criminal jurisdiction with additional jurés in
the case of an Assises court or Criminal tribunal, or assesseurs-
jurés in Mayotte). (Although appeals filed against a criminal jurisdiction
ruling in an overseas department, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Wallis and
Futuna or Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the appeal may be heard in the same
jurisdiction that heard it in first instance, but different judges should sit on
the panel that re-tries the case.
Rétention de sûreté[edit]
The judicial panel of the national jurisdiction for rétention de
sûreté [fr] (preventive detention) is composed of three councillors from
the Court of Cassation (France). It hears appeals of decisions to
impose preventive detention on convicted prisoners who have completed
their sentence but are still considered dangerous.
Cour nationale de l'incapacité et de la tarification de
l'assurance des accidents du travail[edit]
This jurisdiction judges cases where appeals concern incapacitation and
work-related injury, sometimes called technical appeals, rendered by the
Social Security administration.

High jurisdiction - Court of Cassation[edit]

The Court of Cassation does not constitute a third degree of jurisdiction,
because unlike the Courts of Appeal, it only addresses the legal form of
the verdict. Thus the juges du fond designation for first and second degree
judges, which sometimes appears in cassation court verdicts.
The Cour de cassation renders two types of
verdict: confirmatif or infirmatif.
The former confirms a verdict by a court of appeal, (or of another court if
the case has exhausted the first and last degrees of jurisdiction). The trial
theoretically ends at this point, all avenues of recourse having been
exhausted. Still, other jurisdictions may be invoked, such as the European
Court of Human Rights, but this remains rare.
If the court's verdict is on the other hand infirmatif, the judgment[4] is
"cassé", or broken, essentially quashed or canceled. There are then
several possibilities:

 The judgment is quashed and sent back to

a jurisdiction of the same degree as the one
that issued the overturned judgment, but in
a different place.
  The judgment is quashed and sent back to
the same jurisdiction that issued it, but is
then heard by a court composed of different
judges.
 The judgment is quashed, but not sent back
to the lower courts.
If the matter is sent back to the lower courts, both the facts and the law are
retried. The resulting new judgment may also be appealed. The next higher
court would be cassation. Here the bench sometimes quashes a verdict
without returning it to the lower court, or where a lower court may bow to
the Cour de cassation by rendering a judgment that takes the cassation
court's ruling into account.
Unlike the Courts of Appeal, there is only one Cour de cassation, which sits
in Paris.

See also[edit]
 Jurisdictional organization (France)
 Law in France
 Ordinary court
 Private law
 Preventive detention (general)
 Court of cassation
 Court of Cassation (France)
 Labor Court (France)
 Cour d'assises
 Court of Appeal (France)
 Parlement
 Civil Code
 Tribunal correctionnel (France)
 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen
 Criminal intent in common law
 Crime in France - deals with frequency
statistics for various offenses, not the legal
concept of Crime in French law, which is
analogous to "felony" in common law
jurisdictions
 Police Tribunal (France)
 Assizes - obsolete court in come common
law jurisdictions

Notes and references[edit]

 1. ^ « pour tout ce qui concerne les mesures
d'assistance éducative dans les conditions prévues
aux articles 375 et suivants du code civil.
2. ^ Defense ministry website

3. ^ "Juridictions judiciaires d'outre-mer". Ministère de

la Justice, France. 10 June 2013.
4. ^ "Judgment vs. Judgement".

Categories: 
 Judiciaries
 Judiciary of France
 Courts in France
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