Prix
Olivier Debouzy

Why do we struggle to prosecute crimes such as incest, sexual abuse, including abuse committed by members of the clergy, or even mass atrocities? Because they exceed the current capacities of the criminal justice system, but also because the horror they provoke goes beyond the mere violation of the law and the question of punishment. They reveal a profound existential collapse affecting individuals and institutions alike.

This has led to the emergence of various forms of restorative justice centered on repairing harm to victims. Their development signals a transformation in our understanding of justice, which is now called upon to rebuild individuals and restore social bonds. Justice is expanding in scope and increasingly conceived as a process of restoration and fulfillment.

Antoine Garapon advances a new theory of justice, grounded in the depth and complexity of victims’ experiences. For certain crimes, the time has come to provide responses that are more thoughtful and better aligned with the expectations of our societies.

In this work, Professor Jeanneney examines the intensely contested battles and high stakes surrounding appointments to the United States Supreme Court. Through a detailed historical analysis, he demonstrates how these decisions shape the very foundations of American society, addressing issues ranging from the abolition of slavery to the regulation of monopolies.

This study underscores the pivotal role played by the justices in the nation’s trajectory and shows how their decisions continue to influence the United States today.

Who has never wondered whether the resolution of the “cases” portrayed on screen truly reflects the way the law is applied in practice? How would a storyline imagined in the United States have been adjudicated under French law?

Which student has not been tempted to see, in film, an illustration of concepts learned in class, or conversely, to test that knowledge by dissecting cinematic plots through the lens of French criminal law?

Criminal Law Goes to the Movies adopts a dual approach. It combines a traditional study of French criminal law, including offenses and case law, with an analysis of some sixty concrete examples drawn from French and international films.

The film industry has always drawn inspiration from everyday life, with its more or less sensational or macabre news stories. So draw back the curtain and discover, from M to Joker, and from Psycho to Star Wars, how French law would have judged the heroes and antiheroes of the silver screen.

Practicing law through storytelling, that is the ambitious premise of this book, which draws on every variety of narrative form, from historical accounts to fantastical tales, as well as crime thrillers, dystopian fiction, and animal fables.

These modern fables, both engaging and instructive, revive the eighteenth-century tradition of the philosophical tale and invite legal practitioners and lay readers alike to explore and analyze the major legal dynamics shaping our time.

June 23, 2016 to January 31, 2020: at the end of a sequence marked by one of the most severe political and institutional crises in its history, the United Kingdom withdrew from the European Union. The British vote defied the predictions of experts, many of whom viewed, and still view, it as the expression of a whim inflamed by populist falsehoods. In both practical and legal terms, the United Kingdom had largely benefited from its integration into the European Union. In many respects, it shaped the Union to its advantage, steering it toward a neoliberal economic power and overshadowing a political project grounded in solidarity among its members. Domestically, Brexit reflected England’s dominance over its Celtic neighbors against a backdrop of deep territorial and societal divisions.

A political challenge, Brexit was above all a legal ordeal, as the withdrawal of a Member State from the European Union was initiated for the first time. The full range of legal ingenuity was initially mobilized to avoid a no-deal exit. After two and a half years of arduous negotiations and repeated deadlock within a more divided-than-ever Westminster Parliament, Prime Minister Boris Johnson ultimately secured a treaty that entered into force on January 31, 2020. Since then, an uncertain period has unfolded regarding the nature of the future relationship between the two parties.

This essay pursues a dual objective: to present, from a critical perspective, the historical and political factors that help explain how the United Kingdom came to leave the European Union, and to provide, in a manner unprecedented in a French-language work, a detailed account of the legal twists and turns that accompanied a defining event in modern European history.

The ongoing expansion of the digital society is profoundly transforming our lives, both positively and negatively, reshaping our relationships with others and, perhaps, the very future of human identity.

The role of law is being called into question in its territorial scope, its actors, and its core concepts. Traditional branches of law are eroding, if not collapsing altogether. If the law is to preserve its role as guardian of democracy and social cohesion, if it is to remain, tomorrow, a vehicle for the values of liberty, equality, and justice in a changing society marked by widening imbalances, it must adopt the appropriate conceptual tools to guide legislators, governments, and judges in selecting among the solutions made possible by technology. This is the purpose of the present essay.

The concept of “privacy” suffers from a poor reputation in an era that elevates transparency to the status of an absolute virtue. Yet secrecy retains its full relevance at a time when algorithms operate opaquely and predict our behaviors and choices. Case law has also given the concept a renewed meaning: that of enabling each individual to shape his or her own identity.

In the digital age, beyond the protection of personal data ensured by the European Regulation, is not the concept of privacy the appropriate legal framework for addressing the challenges posed by our digital society?

In the country that gave birth to human rights, the justice system is exhausted. Chronic understaffing, unpaid bills, outdated IT infrastructure, ever-lengthening procedural delays, and mounting case backlogs define a system under strain. Even as citizens turn to it in growing numbers, a judiciary on the brink of collapse continues to sound the alarm, largely met with indifference. Conditions in correctional facilities are so dire that the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture has expressed serious concern. How can a country like France tolerate such a situation for decades? Is this merely a question of funding, or are deeper, more complex causes at play?

This book brings together testimony from judges, lawyers, and court clerks to assess the scale of the crisis and attempt to identify its root causes. It also gives voice to a dismissed employee whose life unraveled after she failed to obtain justice within a reasonable time, recounts the suffering of a Somali man driven to madness by his incarceration at Fresnes prison, and tells the story of an investigating judge who died after being unable to withstand the relentless workload imposed upon him. Are politicians so wary of judicial authority that they deliberately keep the courts in a state of deprivation, as some claim? Or must the explanation be sought elsewhere?

Former Ministers of Justice have agreed to shed light on the inner workings of the Ministry and offer their analysis of how the French justice system might be saved. Compelled by chronic underfunding to compromise the very principles that underpin the rule of law, it is in danger of losing its soul. The situation is urgent.

Kissing the Devil’s backside, cooking and eating babies, witches’ sabbaths. From the fifteenth to the late seventeenth century, the confessions attributed to witches and recorded by inquisitors and magistrates fueled the development of demonology. It was through sexual union with Satan, they claimed, that witches derived their malevolent powers.

Witchcraft: a “crime” of women? Women accounted for 80 percent of those sentenced to the stake. According to Armelle Le Bras-Chopard, femininity itself, and the fantasy of its inherent danger, lay at the heart of this persecution. More political than religious in nature, these trials marked a decisive stage in the male-driven construction of the modern state, achieved through the exclusion of women, an exclusion later consolidated by law. They left enduring traces in stereotypes about women and in the persistent resistance of men to allowing them access to the political citadel.

Upon his death, Dr. Martinot instructed his son to have his body cryopreserved until such time as scientific progress might make it possible for him to return to life. He believed that Prometheus would eventually steal from the gods their final secret: immortality. Declaring cryopreservation unlawful, the judge reminded him of the stern lesson of Ecclesiastes: “All are from the dust, and to dust all return.”

But on what legal grounds may a judge impose a sacrificial vision that consigns mortal remains to disappear? What does the law say about death at a time when it has become a taboo, and when transhumanism is advancing the scientific prospect of a “post-mortal” humanity? Can the desire for immortality evolve into a human right?

This book confronts these questions and is addressed to all those who view the unfolding of our world with anxious attention. These issues are not merely legal. They are already political. Perhaps it is Prometheus himself who must now be placed in the freezer.

For nearly fifty years, Star Trek has attracted millions of fans around the world. Yet this science fiction universe is far more than mere entertainment. It advances a social ideal grounded in a highly developed legal order and sophisticated rules of law, which serve, among other purposes, as a framework for exploring strange new worlds and encountering new civilizations across the galaxy.

Over the course of the series and films, dozens of storylines present scenarios that could give rise to case law across a wide range of legal fields. May Captain Kirk depart from the Prime Directive, the legal cornerstone of space exploration, without incurring Spock’s disapproval and the wrath of his superiors? Is Data, the android serving aboard the Enterprise under Captain Picard’s command, a person or a thing? Can Lieutenant Jadzia Dax, science officer on Deep Space 9, be held criminally liable for a crime committed by the symbiont she carries within her? Must B’Elanna Torres, chief engineer of the U.S.S. Voyager, answer before a judge for mere hostile thoughts?

From the far reaches of space, the men and women of Starfleet confront situations that are complex, unprecedented, and sometimes dangerous. More often than not, it is through the application of a rule of law that they arrive at a fair solution, and ideally one that avoids violence.

Written in a highly accessible style and rich with examples, this book is intended for science fiction enthusiasts as well as students seeking to approach the law from an original perspective. More broadly, The Law According to Star Trek aims to demonstrate that science fiction is a genre deeply engaged with the concerns of its time, and that legal scholarship stands to benefit from engaging with it.

Corruption, money laundering, tax evasion, circumvention of international sanctions: U.S. regulatory authorities actively pursue such practices within multinational corporations. When established, these violations can result in severe penalties, including protracted litigation, personal liability claims, staggering fines, and, perhaps most damaging of all, significant reputational harm.

Faced with these risks and the possibility of losing access to the U.S. market, companies often choose to cooperate under a new enforcement paradigm. A corporation under suspicion may be required to forgo judicial defense, conduct extensive internal investigations, pay substantial fines, and implement complex and costly compliance programs. In short, it must purchase peace with U.S. authorities.

Does this form of justice without traditional judicial process at least offer the benefit of efficiency? Does it signal the emergence of a new model of global regulation? And does it foreshadow a worldwide regime of compliance in which individuals and corporations alike are expected to act as their own investigators and accusers?

March 2007: the decree authorizing Sciences Po students to sit for the bar examination sparked strong opposition among law faculty members. September 2009: the creation of a Law School within the same institution drew even more vehement criticism. Its proponents were accused of seeking to establish a culinary school for law.

Far removed from any polemical intent, its director now revisits the many reasons that led to the creation of a new type of law school within a French context increasingly shaped by a drive for reform. This reflection provides an opportunity to examine how French legal scholars constructed their own system of legal education throughout the twentieth century and to compare it with various foreign models that prioritize different objectives.

Grounded in an ongoing experiment, whose defining feature is constant evolution, this analysis ultimately seeks both to test the doctrinal model that prevails in France and to submit to reasoned debate an alternative intellectual and institutional project. This project takes into account the powerful forces of change currently reshaping legal scholarship, legal practice, and legal education worldwide.

When, if ever, can it be just to bomb in the name of human rights? Faced with an ongoing or imminent massacre, the question of military intervention inevitably arises. Yet even a just war results in civilian casualties. Is it better to kill or to let die?

Referred to variously as humanitarian intervention, the right or duty to intervene, or the responsibility to protect, military action justified on humanitarian grounds remains one of the most pressing issues in international relations.

This interdisciplinary work, drawing on history, law, ethics, and political theory, is the most comprehensive study ever published in French on the subject. Relying on numerous examples, from punitive wars in ancient China to NATO’s intervention in Libya, it develops a realist theory of intervention grounded in five criteria derived from just war doctrine: just cause, legitimate authority, right intention, last resort, and proportionality.

Must we be bound in order to speak to one another? Must particular conditions govern our speech in order to remain bound? It would appear that the ties created through speech are, in fact, legal ties. There are fewer than ten such categories, including the marital bond, the contractual bond, the bond of nationality, and others. They relate to law and society as the musical scale relates to music, or as primary and secondary colors relate to painting.

Rather than speaking of a crisis of the social bond, which is often said to give rise to a crisis of justice, it would be more accurate to describe a fracture in legal bonds. Instead of attempting to fill this void, or ignoring it through relationships that are fusion-driven, unstable, or violent, a more demanding path lies in building these relationships under the guidance of a third party, through dialogue and within the limits set by the rule of law.

This essay on the bonds created through speech draws on a transdisciplinary approach spanning law, sociology, psychology, and the arts.