Community Law In The French Courts

The European Communities are only two decades old. The most important of the three Communities, the European Economic Community (EEC), is even younger, having come into existence in 1958. 1 Two decades have been hardly enough time to have more than reached, much less settled, the impor tant questions of the relationship between Community law and institutions and those of the Member States. Among the most challenging of the questions is the extent to which the courts of the Member States will fulfill the obligation of safeguarding the rights created by the Treaty of Rome in favor of private persons, both indivi dual and corporate, an obligation which the Court of Justice of the European Communities has said rests upon the national courts. This obligation flows naturally, though not necessarily, from the commitment of the Court of Justice to an effective Community. However, the result depends on that commitment, and there is a natural concern that the national courts may not share the commitment to an effective Community to a degree necessary to fulfill their obligations under Community law as those obligations have been defined by the Court of Justice. In order to fu1fi11 their obligations to Community law the courts of the Member States will have to solve some serious problems, and do it with comparatively little help from the Court of Justice.

This text provides a basic introduction to the French legal system, covering all aspects. It explains the sources of French law, the structure of its courts and legal professions, and all other aspects of the legal process.

Recoge: 1.Communnity institutions - 2.The community legal system - 3.Community law and the member states - 4.Administrative law.

French law displays many characteristics that set it apart in a world class of its own. It can be said to proceed from a number of independent streams that coexist despite apparent contradiction. More than half of the 2283 articles of the famous Code Civile of 1804 remain unaltered; yet French administrative judges jealously guard their prerogative to create their own public law. And yet again, since the 1974 law empowering the legislature to convene the Constitutional Council that judges the constitutionality of laws under the 1958 Constitution, the courts' distinction between 'rules' and 'fu.

At the beginning of 2015, the Court of Justice opened its archives, which created a new and challenging primary source for those studying the Court of Justice: the dossiers de procédure which contain much more than the contemporary documents published by the Court. This volume includes five chapters which analyse the activities of the Court of Justice from a highly diverse range of non-doctrinal perspectives. However, they also highlight significant new developments at the Court itself which attract attention and deserve analysis. Thus, the idea behind this volume is to make available new tools and approaches through which the activities of the Court of Justice can be studied. It shows a more intense engagement with scholars across disciplines to reflect on law and courts, with the Court of Justice as a central focus, and new methods (such as network citation analysis) and sources (such as the Court's archives) being discovered and developed. It also shows a more intense and deeply knowledgeable engagement with EU law and the Court of Justice by non-legal scholars, such as the new sociologies and histories of the Court of Justice. These and other new approaches have spawned productive and ongoing conversations across disciplines.

This is the first comprehensive collection of court decisions dealing exclusively with the relationship between European Community law and the national laws of the Member States. It contains 90 decisions given between 1962 and 1993 by both the Community's Court of Justice (20 cases) and the courts of the 12 Member States (70 cases). The volume includes the recent decisions of national courts concerning the Maastricht Treaty. Key recurring topics of the decisions are the supremacy and direct effect of Community law, its impact on national sovereignty and constitutional rights, and the remedies available before national courts for its enforcement. All the texts are presented in English, having been translated wherever necessary. Each decision is preceded by a concise summary and key-word heading. The volume also includes a systematic introduction, digest of key-word headings, table of cases, and detailed index.

Now in a much expanded and completely revised fourth edition, this work discusses the structure, procedure and jurisdiction of the French administrative courts, with emphasis on the Conseil d'tat. The author also assesses the influence of this law on selected countries within the European Community and on the law of the Community itself. The numerous appendices provide extensive judicial statistics, model pleadings and other illustrative material. The approach is comparative with frequent reference to administrative law and practice within the United Kingdom.