Reforming Judicial Pactice in France by Emulating American Inventiveness (Révolutionner La Pratique Judiciaire: S'Inspirer De L'Inventivité Américaine)

Abstract

The United States have gone through a series of legal and procedural revolutions, in criminal law as well as in other fields, such as family law, torts, labour law, and so forth. These reforms were necessary in view of some of their well-known excesses such as mass incarceration, factory-line processing of offenders, and, last but not least, adversarial types of procedures and hearings. This has led, inter alia, to the creation of 'problem solving courts'. Empirical evidence shows that this has produced remarkable results both in terms of reoffending, cost and impact on the community. The United States have also created 'therapeutic jurisprudence', which endeavors to think of the law and its implementation, courts functioning and lawyers' practice, in terms of their 'therapeutic' or 'antitherapeutic' effects on people. Such innovative models, which fascinate the rest of the western world and beyond, and have been imported and emulated elsewhere, also allow to revisit French 'juges de l'application des peines' (sentence's implementation judges and courts) and to realize that their creation, sixty years ago, may well have constituted a remarkable intuition.

Note: Downloadable document is in French.

Keywords: therapeutic jurisprudence, problem-solving courts, France, juge de l'application des peines, reentry courts, sentencing, sentences, prison release, conditional release, legitimacy of justice, compliance, reoffending, recidivism, family law, divorce, fair trial, law faculties, lawyers, probation

JEL Classification: K10, K14, K19, K39, K40, K41, K42, K49