French Justice
I was one of those people who wanted to go to law school – to fight for justice, of course – since I was young. After graduation, I quickly realized that I wasn’t sure if I liked the actual practice of law, and that’s something I am hoping to resolve during this year away. But the law still fascinates me. I was browsing the blog SpottedbyLocals.com, and came across a suggestion to visit the Palais de Justice (i.e., the courthouse) while in Paris.
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| From Paris by day |
The blog mentioned that everything would be in French, but it was interesting to observe the rituals nonetheless. A central principle in France is for the legal proceedings to be public, so we could just slip into courtrooms to watch (much like many proceedings at home). I proposed the idea of visiting the courthouse to Sean. Although he joked that we could probably tag along with Matt to work and observe how computer programming is done in France, he agreed to go.
The law of France is based upon a civil law system, a concept I vaguely remembered from my law school days. Damn, I thought, I should have taken comparative law. This is a thought I’ve had many times over since we started this trip. I was never interested in any international classes during my schooling, preferring to learn about American politics and law instead. At the time, international or comparative classes seemed to not be relevant in my life. (It is somewhat ironic, and unfortunate, that later in the year after I took an International Terrorism class in college – one of the few international classes I did take for my political science major – September 11th happened. Suddenly, the class was all too relevant in a very real way.)
From what little I do know, the English-based legal systems are centered upon common law, where judicial precedent is everything. By contrast, the French legal system is a civil law system, where a civil code serves as the foundation. Juries are not common in France, and judges serve very active roles.
This was played out in the several court proceedings we observed one Wednesday morning. One of the courtrooms we ducked into was a criminal court room. As I suspected, all of the courtrooms were pretty grand, a far contrast from the bland administrative courtrooms I’ve seen at the Allegheny County courthouse at home. The judge, decked out in a black robe with a white bib, sat up high on a bench, surrounded by many people who I assumed were the court clerks and staff. At least in this proceeding, the lawyers played an inactive role, sitting down to the left and the right of the bench. The lawyers wore the same formal robe as the judge, but I saw many of them with jeans peeking out from underneath. The defendant stood solitary before the judge. From what I could gather, the proceeding appeared to be a criminal sentencing. I had no idea what the judge was saying, but it was clear that she was not happy with the defendants’ conduct. She reemed him out in high pitched French for several minutes, then began reading something from a book at her bench. I wasn’t sure what crime the defendant was accused of committing, but it was clear it was something worthy of a tongue lashing.
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| From Paris by day |
During our visit to the courthouse, we also checked out a proceeding in the court of appeals. Inside the courtroom, three judges sat on a bench, with one lawyer standing speaking in front of them. At one point, the lawyer sat down, and an individual got up to speak. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, because generally only lawyers spoke to the judges in the appellate courts in the United States. I also couldn’t figure out what purpose large glass walls on each side of the courtroom served. It appeared to be some sort of security chamber, with microphones, but I could not tell how they were used. While the lawyer and the lay person spoke to the judges for a short while, the judges clearly dominated the proceeding. We watched the middle judge speak to the lawyer and lay person at length. I never was able to figure out the context of the proceeding, but it was interesting to observe nonetheless.
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| From Paris by day |
Unlike many of the courthouses at home, most of this courthouse was deserted, except for a line of young, eager, fresh-faced individuals who appeared to be new lawyers about to be sworn into the court.
I couldn’t help but notice, for whatever it is worth, that like at home, most of the criminal defendants were black and the judges and lawyers were white. Admittedly, this sample size was very small, so I am not sure if it is representative.
Visiting the courthouse was fascinating, at least for me, and I decided I would try to repeat a visit to a courthouse later on in the trip.