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Feb. 1, 2024
Teachings
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► Full Reference: F. Ancel & M.-A. Frison-Roche, Droit de la compliance (Compliance Law), École nationale de la magistrature - ENM (French National School for the Judiciary), in collaboration with the École de Formation professionnelle des Barreaux du ressort de la cour d'appel de Paris - EFB (Paris Bar School), Paris, February 1 and 2, 2024
This teaching is given in French.
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► Presentation of the Teaching: The aim of this two-day conference is to enable judges and lawyers to grasp the issues, objectives and methods that define Compliance Law as it is practised in companies.
The speakers will illustrate the growing trend towards litigation, which is difficult to reconcile with the supranational dimension, or even indifference to territories, for example when disputes concern systemic climate or digital issues: the result is a renewal of the role of the judge and the role of lawyers.
This must be set against the renewal of the role and operation of companies themselves.
This is analysed from the perspective of Civil Law, in particular Contract Law and Liability Law. Company Law and Criminal Law are also addressed, as well as the way in which the legal system now integrates governance, regulation, climate and digital issues and the smooth operation of financial markets through Compliance techniques.
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► Organisation of the Teaching: This conference is divided into two parts.
The first day is designed as a presentation of the major themes through which Compliance Law crosses the branches of traditional Law. The speakers will be professors of Law who will successively summarise the branches of Law and put into perspective the way in which Compliance imperatives give rise to new situations, new difficulties and new solutions.
This enables the second day to focus on practical and topical issues and to debate controversial questions between people of different sensibilities. The participants tend to be judges, members of regulatory authorities, lawyers, members of associations and so on.
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► Enrolment procedure: The course is open to all judicial and consular magistrates, as well as lawyers.
Registrations can be made directly with the ENM or with the EFB.
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► Speakers :
🎤François Ancel, Judge at the Première Chambre civile de la Cour de cassation (First Civil Chamber of the French Court of cassation)
🎤Thomas Baudesson, Attorney at the Paris Bar, Partner at Clifford Chance
🎤Guillaume Beaussonie, Full Professor at Toulouse 1 Capitole University
🎤Jacques Boulard, Premier Président de la Cour d’appel de Paris (First President of the Paris Court of Appeal)
🎤Marie Caffin-Moi, Full Professor at Paris Panthéon-Assas University
🎤Malik Chapuis, Judge at the Tribunal judiciaire de Paris (Paris First Instance Civil Court)
🎤Lucie Chatelain, Advocacy and Litigation Manager - Civil Liability of Parent Companies, Sherpa
🎤Jean-Benoît Devauges, Directeur Juridique, Ethique et Gouvernance des entreprises (Legal, Ethics and enterprises governance Director), MEDEF
🎤Marie-Anne Frison-Roche, Professor of Regulatory and Compliance Law, Director of the Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC)
🎤Arnaud Gossement, Attorney at the Paris Bar, Partner at Gossement Avocats
🎤Thibault Goujon-Bethan, Full Professor at Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University
🎤Christophe Ingrain, Attorney at the Paris Bar, Partner at Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier
🎤Isabelle Jegouzo, Director of the Agence française anticorruption - AFA (French Anti-Corruption Agency)
🎤Anne-Valérie Le Fur, Full Professor at Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University
🎤Charlotte Michon, Attorney at the Paris Bar, partner at Charlotte Michon Avocat
🎤Jean-Baptiste Racine, Full Professor at Paris Panthéon-Assas University
🎤 Jean-Christophe Roda, Full Professor at Jean-Moulin Lyon 3 University
🎤Jérôme Simon, 1er Vice-Procureur Financier (First Financial Vice-Prosecutor)
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🧮read below the programme put together and organised by François Ancel and Marie-Anne Frison-Roche, as well as the reports of each presentation⤵️
Feb. 1, 2024
Conferences
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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, "Compliance et Responsabilité civile : comprendre et raison garder" ("Compliance and Civil Liability: understanding and keeping our heads"), in Droit de la compliance (Compliance Law), École nationale de la magistrature - ENM (French National School for the Judiciary) in collaboration with the École de Formation professionnelle des Barreaux du ressort de la cour d'appel de Paris - EFB (Paris Bar School), Paris, February 1, 2024.
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► This conference is given in French.
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🧮see the full programme of this event (in French)
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🌐consult on LinkedIn a general presentation of this event, which links to a presentation of each speech (in French)
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🔲see the slides used to support the presentation (in French)
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📝This conference and the Working Paper on which it is based are to be linked with the article to be published in the book📘Compliance Obligation
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🎤see a presentation of the conference "Droit de la Compliance : tour d'horizon" ("Compliance Law: overview"), given at the same symposium
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► Presentation of the conference : It is difficult, even artificial, to separate the presentation of the relationship between Compliance Law and Civil Liability from the consideration given in Compliance to Criminal Liability, sanctions and the whole contractual organisation. But, if only for reasons of time, this will be done.
The chosen method consists of using decisions handed down either under Compliance Law, an emerging branch of Law of which an overview has been given before📎!footnote-3362, or under Special Liability Laws, such as Company Law (but here too the field of analysis is huge), or under Ordinary Civil Liability Law. The latter is often the preferred approach.
It always seems that civil liability and Compliance Law are both intimate and have a difficult relationship. To understand them, before embarking on crusades in one direction or another, it is technically necessary to look at the liabilities attached to the application of "compliance regulations" imposed on economic operators, who contractualise the resulting legal obligations and whose third parties may also rely on breaches on the grounds of civil liability. This is the first stage of the analysis. Much is made of the Vigilance technique. Even if this is the advances point of Compliance, we also need to look at the GDPR, the French co-called "Sapin 2" law, Anti-Corruption, etc.
However, civil liability is not the same depending on whether the obligation, legal and/or contractual, in relation to which it arises as a cause of action, gives rise, depending on the case, the text and the person, to an obligation of means or an obligation of result. If there is one principle to bear in mind, particularly in the mind of the judge, it is that, unless a text or clause provides otherwise, an obligation is an obligation of means.
This essential question raises the need to better define the "Compliance Obligation", which consists of prevention and detection, with the economic operator making his "best efforts" with regard to the monumental goals to which the various regulations (thus finding their unity) are normatively anchored. The Ex Ante evidential dimension thus comes to the fore.
In the second part of the analysis, which continues to be based on court decisions, we need to measure the "points of contact" between these "special compliance responsibilities" and the Ordinary Law of Civil Liability. Indeed, because this is a profound movement that runs through the entire legal system, expressing a social demand that distinguishes Western law from the rest of the world, Ordinary Liability Law has long had a preventive dimension and targets operators in a different way, not only because of their power, but also because of their "mission". This is expressly stated in the case law, and these points of contact do not justify opposing the two branches. It would only be if Compliance Law were confused with its instrument, "conformity", and if new principles were invented in an Ordinary Law, that clashes could arise.
In the third stage of the analysis, which can be applied to the principles at stake today, it should be remembered that while there is no general Compliance Obligation under Ordinary Law, which implies detecting and preventing for oneself and for others any breach of any applicable regulation likely to harm others, there is a principle of freedom, as the Conseil constitutionnel (French Constitutional Council) regularly reminds us. Unless we change the legal system so that people become nothing more than subjects who obey all regulations and let it be seen that they do so, with the judge's role being limited to punishing them for not doing so. Indeed, the principle of freedom remains the foundation both of the Ordinary Civil Liability Law (and not of repression, as in Chinese Law) and of the Special Law of Compliance (and not of conformity, as in Chinese law).
In conclusion, it appears that the evolution of Civil Liability, in particular due to the spirit of a Compliance Law that is articulated with it, is leading to a twofold movement: from Ex Post liability to Ex Ante responsibility📎!footnote-3363, and from Liability to Accountability.
To accompany this movement, alliances are being forged and must be fostered, which brings Compliance Law face to face with Competition Law, alliances often forged by contract and for which the role of the judge is being renewed, particularly through mediation techniques.
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Feb. 1, 2024
Conferences
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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, "Droit de la compliance : tour d'horizon" ("Compliance Law: Overview"), in Droit de la compliance (Compliance Law), École nationale de la magistrature - ENM (French National School for the Judiciary) in collaboration with the École de Formation professionnelle des Barreaux du ressort de la cour d'appel de Paris - EFB (Paris Bar School), Paris, February 1, 2024.
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► This conference is given in French
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🧮see the full programme of this event (in French)
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🌐consult on LinkedIn a general presentation of this event, which links to a presentation of each speech (in French)
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🔲see the slides used to support the presentation (in French)
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🎤see a presentation of the other speech about "Compliance et Responsabilité civile : comprendre et raison garder" ("Compliance and Civil Liability: understanding and keeping our heads"), given at the same symposium
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► Presentation of the conference: Compliance Law is mysterious in itself, because it is still in creation📎!footnote-3241, because its presence and power are felt, but it is difficult to grasp it. It is necessary, however, because it deals with the most important, even the most dramatic, facts and carries with it the greatest ambitions. Magistrates must also "make the effort" to participate in the "adventure of Compliance Law", because it affects, and even overturns, all subjects, and because the Prosecutor and the Judge play an increasing role in it📎!footnote-3242.
Because the purpose of this conference is to introduce the two days of a training course designed for magistrates and open to lawyers, it only provides an "overview" of, so that we do not get lost in the sprawling regulations, the global mechanisms and the political ambitions that permeate them.
Therefore, without going into any of the subjects, it is about opening up four ways of entering what is a branch of Law that is being born before our eyes:
1. Understanding Compliance Law through "regulations"
2. Understanding Compliance Law through "tools"📎!footnote-3243
3. Understanding Compliance Law through "methods"
4. Understanding Compliance Law through "goals"📎!footnote-3244
The four approches are legitimate because the four dimensions are articulated in the legal system, notably case law.
But the more positive Law is consolidated, the more its normativity through the goals that give normativity, or even a simplicity without which the whole is not humanly controllable.
These Goals are Monumental and Europe bears them more and better than other areas of the world📎!footnote-3245.
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Jan. 26, 2024
Publications
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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Compliance Jurisdictionalisation, Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant, "Compliance & Regulation" Serie, 2024, 464 p.
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► General presentation of the book: Sanctions, controls, appeals, deals: judges and lawyers are everywhere in the Compliance mechanisms, creating unprecedented situations, sometimes without a solution yet available. Even though Compliance was designed to avoid the judge and produce security by avoiding conflict. This jurisdictionalisation is therefore new. Forcing companies to prosecute and judge, a constrained role, perhaps against their nature. Leading to the adaptation of major procedural principles, with difficulty. Confronting arbitration with new perspectives. Putting the judge at heart, in mechanisms designed so that he is not there. How in practice to organize these opposites and anticipate the solutions? This is the challenge taken up by this book.
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► Summary of the book: There have always been Judges and Lawyers in Compliance Law, in particular because this branch of Law is an extension of Regulatory Law in which they have a core place. This results from the fact that the decisions taken in respect of Compliance are contestable in Court, including Arbitration, those issued by the Company, such as those of States or Authorities, the Judge in turn becoming what Compliance Law is effective.
The novelty lies more in the phenomenon of "jurisdictionalisation", that is to say that the trial model penetrates all Compliance Law, and not only the Ex Post part that it includes. Moreover, it seems that this jurisdictionalisation influences the non-legal dimension of Compliance. This movement has effects that must be measured and causes that must be understood. Advantages and disadvantages that must be balanced. If only to form an opinion vis-à-vis Companies that have become Prosecutors and Judges of themselves and others ...: encourage this "Jurisdictionalisation of Compliance", fight it, perhaps influence it? In any case, understand it!
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🏗️General construction of the book:The book opens with a double Introduction. The first, which is freely accessible, consists of a summary of the book, while the second, which is substantial, deals with the need to bring the Judge and the Lawyer into line if Compliance Law is to be the hallmark of States governed by the Rule of Law.
The first Chapter is devoted to what is specific to Compliance Law: the transformation of companies into Prosecutors and Judges of themselves, and even of others. The second Chapter examines the interference between General Procedural Law and Compliance techniques. The third Chapter measures the influence of the reasoning and requirements of Compliance Law in methods of dispute resolution where it has not, with a few exceptions, been present, but where it has a great future: arbitration. Because trials and judgements are indissociable, because legal techniques and the Rule of Law must not be dissociated, and because Compliance techniques could paradoxically be the weapon used to dissociate them, because the power to judge and the procedures surrounding it must not be dissociated, because Compliance and the Rule of Law must therefore be conceived and practised together, the rise in power of one being a sign of the rise in power of the other, and not the price of the weakening of the Rule of Law, the fourth Chapter deals with the role of the Judge in Compliance.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DOUBLE INTRODUCTION
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Main Aspects of the book Compliance Jurisdictionalisation
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Reinforce the Judge and the Lawyer to impose Compliance Law as a characteristic of the Rule of Law
I. THE COMPANY ESTABLISHED PROSECUTOR AND JUDGE OF ITSELF BY COMPLIANCE LAW
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝The "Judge-Judged". Articulating Words and Things in the face of Conflicts of Interest
🕴️C. Granier, 📝Reflections on the existence of companies’ jurisprudence through Compliance matters
🕴️L.-M. Augagneur, 📝The jurisdictionalisation of reputation by platforms
🕴️A. Bruneau, 📝The compagny judges itself: the Compliance function in the bank
🕴️J.-M. Coulon, 📝Compliance Law in the construction industry and the contradictions, impossibilities and. deadlocks that companies face
🕴️Ch. Lapp, 📝Compliance in companies: the statues of process
🕴️J. Heymann, 📝The Legal Nature of the Facebook "Supreme Court"
🕴️D. Latour, 📝Internal investigations within companies
🕴️A. Bavitot, 📝Shaping the company through negotiated Criminal Justice Agreements. French perspective
🕴️S. Merabet, 📝Vigilance, being a judge and not judge
II. PROCEDURAL LAW IN COMPLIANCE LAW
🕴️N. Cayrol, 📝Procedural Principles in Compliance Law
🕴️F. Ancel, 📝Compliance Law, a new guiding principle for the Trial?
🕴️B. Sillaman, 📝Taking the Compliance U.S. Procedural Experience globally
🕴️S. Scemla, & 🕴️D. Paillot, 📝The difficulty for Compliance Enforcement Authorities to comprehend the Rights of the Defence in compliance matters
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Adjusting General Procedural Law to Compliance Law by the nature of things
III. ARTICULATION BETWEEN COMPLIANCE LAW AND INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION
🕴️J.-B. Racine, 📝Compliance and arbitration. An attempt at problematisation
🕴️E. Silva-Romero & 🕴️R. Legru, 📝What place is there for compliance in investment arbitration?
🕴️M. Audit, 📝The arbitrator's position on compliance
🕴️E. Kleiman, 📝The objectives of compliance confronted with the actors of arbitration
IV. THE JUDGE IN COMPLIANCE LAW
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝The Judge, the Compliance Obligation and the Company. The Compliance Evidence System
🕴️J. Morel-Maroger, 📝The application of compliance standards by European Union judges
🕴️S. Schiller, 📝A single judge in the event of an international breach of compliance obligations?
🕴️O. Douvreleur, 📝Compliance and Judge of the Law
🕴️F. Raynaud, 📝The Administrative Judge and Compliance
🕴️E. Wennerström, 📝Some Reflections on Compliance and the European Court of Human Rights
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Jan. 22, 2024
Public Auditions
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► Référence complète : M.-A. Frison-Roche, audition notamment par Maître Sophie Bonne et Maître Anne-Claire Ancelin, respectivement présidente et rapporteure de la Commission du Conseil Supérieur du Notariat (CSN), élaborant un rapport sur Compliance : un espace à conquérir ?, 22 janvier 2024, CSN, Paris..
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► Résumé de la présentation : j'ai eu l'occasion d'étudier et de discuter des relations entre le notaire comme professionnel et le notariat comme structure de régulation d'une part et le Droit de la Compliance, d'autre part.
Je l'ai fait lors des travaux du Conseil Supérieur du Notariat sur la raison d'être, dans une audition avec la Commission du CSN en charge de la réflexion à ce propos et et d'une façon plus générale à propos de l'articulation entre l'office du notariat et les mécanismes juridiques de régulation, car le Droit de la Compliance est le prolongement du Droit de la Régulation. J'ai d'ailleurs à ce titre fait une masterclass sur le droit de la compliance lors du Congrès annuel de 2022 à ce sujet.
M'appuyant sur ces premières réflexions et discussions, je peux articuler les propos suivants:
0. Observation préalable : l'intitulé semble sous-entendre que la compliance serait un espace nouveau, où le notariat serait étranger et qu'il faudrait "conquérir" cette terra incognita , le point d'interrogation permettant de suggérer que, si nouveau soit le Droit de la Compliance, c'est plutôt dans les professions agissant en Ex Ante qu'il est le moins "étranger" et que l'espace est donc déjà le plus "naturel".
L'enjeu est plutôt dans l'ambition que l'on peut en avoir : soit une ambition faible ("conformité"), soit une ambition forte ("Droit de la Compliance").
1. Un espace restreint aujourd'hui et plus encore demain si l'on réduit la Compliance à ce qui n'est que son outil : la conformité. Cette réduction équivaut à un grand dommage, car les algorithmes sont aptes à prendre en charge la conformité, et font le faire le plus en plus, tandis que la compliance est maniée par les êtres humains. La conformité est, mais n'est que, un outil de la Compliance.
2. La Compliance se définit par les Buts Monumentaux
- Les Buts monumentaux sont fixés par les Autorités politiques et publiques et ne peuvent être fixés que par elles ; le déploiement des moyens peuvent être déploient par d'autres que l'administration
3. Pragmatiquement, les buts monumentaux unifient la "masse réglementaire"
4. Tendre, dans une trajectoire, vers eux nécessite des êtres humains qui se coordonnent et agissent ensemble (ensemble du modèle concurrentiel)
5. Ils constituent la Compliance comme une branche ex ante du Droit
6. Ils placent le Droit de la Compliance en déploiement du Droit de la Régulation
7. Le Notariat est alors tout d'abord un "agent d'effectivité de la conformité", se dotant pour cela notamment des outils algorithmiques
8. Le Notariat est aussi une profession humaniste qui aide l'Etat, les entreprises et les parties intéressées à tendre vers la protection des êtres humains, pour qu'ils ne soient pas broyés par les systèmes devenus plus menaçants (but monumental négatif) et qu'ils en bénéficient (but monumental positif)
9. En cela, le Notariat, comme le Juge et l'Avocat, doit être consolidé dans sa structure, et doit aussi se présenter, au niveau du professionnel, au niveau de l'étude, au niveau de la profession structurée
10. Le Notariat doit aussi conforter sa gouvernance dans ce nouveau système de Compliance qui est en lien avec l'Etat de Droit et la Démocratie.
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► Voir dans mes travaux ceux qui peuvent présenter un intérêt au regard de cette audition ⤵️
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 🖥️Appliquer la notion de "Raison d'être à la profession du Notariat, 2021
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche,🎤La compliance pour les études notariales : aspects théoriques et pratiques, Congrès des notaires , 2022
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche,📝Notariat et régulation font bon ménage, 2015
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 💬La profession investit le Droit de la Compliance et détermine sa Raison d'Etre, 2023
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (dir.), 📕Les Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance, 2022
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Penser et manier la Vigilance par ses Buts Monumentaux de Compliance, mars 2023.
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Contrat de compliance, clauses de compliance, 2022.
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 🚧L'invention de la vigilance : un terme nouveau pour une Responsabilité en Ex Ante, 2021.
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Synthèse : Le rôle du juge dans le déploiement du droit de la régulation par le droit de la compliance, à paraître
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Le Droit de la compliance, 2016.
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Jan. 17, 2024
Editorial responsibilities : Direction of the collection "Cours-Série Droit privé", Editions Dalloz (33)
► Full Reference: J.-D. Pellier, Droit de la consommation (Consummer Law), 4th ed., Dalloz, "Cours Dalloz-Série Droit privé" Serie, 2024, 512 p.
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► General presentation of the book: Le Droit de la consommation est récent mais nous le vivons chaque jour. Il a été refondu en 2016. Il exprime aussi une nouvelle façon de concevoir le droit civil, le droit commercial, le droit pénal et le droit public. Voilà bien des raisons d'apprendre et de comprendre le "Droit de la consommation" grâce à ce manuel clair et à jour.
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📕read the back cover (in French)
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📕read the back cover of the 1st edition (in French)
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📕read the table of contents (in French)
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📚see the entire "Cours - droit privé" Serie
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Jan. 12, 2024
Conferences
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► Full Reference : M.-A. Frison-Roche, "Conclusion. Compliance et contrats publics : une alliance naturelle" ("Conclusion. Compliance and Public Contracts: a natural alliance"), in M.-A. Frison-Roche, C. Gilles & A. Oumedjkane (dir.), Compliance et contrats publics (Compliance and public contracts), Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC), Centre de recherches et d’études administratives de Montpellier (CREAM) and Centre d’Études et de Recherches Comparatives Constitutionnelles et Politiques (CERCOP) of the Montpellier University, Faculté de droit et de science politique de Montpellier, 39 rue de l’Université, Amphiteatre C Paul Valéry, January 12, 2024
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🧮see the full programme of this event
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✏️read the notes taken on the spot to draw up the symposium conclusion
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🌐consult on LinkedIn a general presentation of this event, which links to a presentation of each speech (in French)
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🧱consult the co-organisation sheet of this event, giving an account of the various speakers
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► English Summary of the conference: Firstly, it would appear that, as with all the contracts studied in the area of Compliance, public contracts are, for the public authorities or public companies, an instrument through which they implement the Compliance Obligation imposed on them by the laws and regulations. Public bodies involved in public contracts are particularly concerned because of the points of contact, even intimacy, between Compliance Law and the general interest. But the contract, whether public or private, remains in its classic conception what results from the expression of two wills which exchange their consents📎!footnote-3221.
Secondly, in terms of free will, public contracts can be the means by which public bodies and their co-contractors express their conception of what needs to be done to preserve the future, for example in environmental and social matters. On the contrary, the seemingly technical issue of exclusions from public contracts, whether they be automatic exclusions or optional exclusions, expresses the extent to which economically powerful players (public authorities, municipalities, public companies) take care of each other. In this respect, Compliance Law runs counter to Competition Law📎!footnote-3222 and profoundly affects Public Procurement Law.
But thirdly, the public contract, in that it expresses the general interest by its very nature, its ex ante nature reinforces regulatory action and the nature of Compliance as an extension of Regulation📎!footnote-3223. It appears to be the most appropriate instrument for this new branch of Law, without the need for it to be transformed. This underlines the extent to which Compliance Law must draw on classical Law, in this case Administrative Law.
Moreover, fourthly, the public contract appears to be the model for the Compliance Contract. The public contract is a model first of all because of the central place of the general interest. The "Monumental Goals" in which the substantive definition of Compliance Law is anchored📎!footnote-3224 are a development of this. Admittedly, this concern for the general interest drives the public entity, but the "raison d'être" of companies more generally also incorporates it through "governance", profoundly renewed by Compliance.
The public contract is also a model because the contract is handled by a powerful party, in this case the public entity. The subject of Compliance Law is the powerful company, and only that company, chosen because it is powerful and because it uses that power to achieve the Monumental Goals. In this respect, the "exorbitant powers" that characterise the public contractor are reconstituted either by Compliance laws or by stipulations, which confer on all obliged or voluntary companies - by virtue of CSR, which has many points of contact with Compliance Law as long as it is not confused with obeying the applicable regulations (which is what "conformity" is)📎!footnote-3225 - a power over the co-contractor, or even over third parties, equivalent to that of the public entity📎!footnote-3235.
The judge is the one who, through contractual litigation, both public and private, will bring to life these Monumental Goals desired by the State, carried by powerful entities (administration, companies), pledge of the Rule of Law📎!footnote-3228.
These include contractual mechanisms for information, audit, disclosure, control, collaboration, supervision, etc., through which the company, whether private or public, takes charge of the structure it has created, for example the value chain it masters📎!footnote-3226.
It can therefore be concluded that this logic of a public contract as an instrument of administrative action to achieve goals of general interest, now fully taken up in Compliance Law, must be acculturated into the Ordinary Contract Law and must be preserved in Public Contract Law, which presupposes a new balance with Competition Law, which for a long time carried within Public Law a contract model without concern for sustainability or the collective interest. To achieve this, dialogue between judges is essential. The Conseil d'État (French Council of State) and the Cour de cassation (French Court of cassation) set the example📎!footnote-3227.
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📝This conference will be followed by an article, "The public contract, model of the Compliance Contract", which will be published in the book 📘Compliance and contract.
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Dec. 14, 2023
Publications
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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, "The "Judge-Judged". Articulating Words and Things in the face of Conflicts of Interest", in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Compliance Jurisdictionalisation, Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant, "Compliance & Regulation" Serie, 2024, pp. 69-93
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📝read the article
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🚧read the bilingual Working Paper which is the basis of this article, with additional developments, technical references and hyperlinks
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📘read a general presentation of the book, Compliance Jurisdictionalisation, in which this article is published
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► Summary of the article (done by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance - JoRC): Since the topic of this article is part of a chapter devoted to the Company established as Prosecutor and Judge of itself by Compliance Law, chapter aiming to use the relevant qualifications, it is appropriate therefore to worry about the adjustment of words and things, of the way in which the relationship between ones and the others evolve, and of the more particular question of knowing if this evolution is radical or not when one speaks of "judge ".
because "judging" is a word that the Law has disputed with other disciplines, but that it has appropriated not so much to confer more powers on those who act in its name, for example that who supervise and punish, but on the contrary to impose limits, since to the one who judges it has put the chains of the procedure under foot, thus making bearable for the other the exercise of such a power. This is why those who want the power to judge would often want to not have the title, because having de jure the title of judge is being subject to the correlated regime, it is to be submitted to procedural correctness.
It is therefore to better limit that the Law sees who judges, for obliging this so-powerful character to the procedure. But the Law also has the power to appoint a judge and to fix the contours of all the characters in the trial. He usually does it with clarity, distinguishing the ones of the others, not confusing them. This art of distinction has constitutional value. Thus, not only the one who judges must be named "judge" but the procedural apparatus which goes with this character and which constitutes a way of doing things and fundamental rights, are not "granted" by kindness or in a second step: it is a block. If you didn't want to have to endure procedural rights, you didn't have to want to be a judge. Admittedly, one could conclude that the procedure would therefore have become "substantial"; by this elevation, it is rather a fashion of saying that the procedure would no longer be a "servant": it is a kind of declaration of love for the procedure, as long as one affirms that at the acts of judging , or investigating, or prosecuting, are "naturally" attached the procedural rights for the one who is likely to be the object of these powers.
Compliance Law, in search of allies to achieve the Monumental Goals for the aims of which it was instituted, will require, or even demand, private companies to go and seek themselves, in particular through investigations. internal or active vigilance on others, for finding facts likely to be reproached to them. Compliance Law will also require that they prosecute those who have committed these acts. Compliance La will again demand that they sanction the acts that people have committed in their name.
This is clearly understood from the point of view of Ex Ante efficiency. The confusion of roles is often very efficient since it is synonymous with the accumulation of powers. For example, it is more efficient that the one who pursues is also the one who instructs and judges, since he knows the case so well... Besides, it is more efficient that he also elaborates the rules, so he knows better than anyone the "spirit" of the texts. This was often emphasized in Regulatory Law. When everything is Information and risk management, that would be necessary ... But all this is not obvious.
For two reasons, one external and the other internal.
Externally, the first reason is that it is not appropriate to "name" a judge who is not. This would be too easy, because it would then be enough to designate anyone, or even to do it oneself to appropriate the regime that goes with it, in particular for obtain a so-called legitimate power for obtaining that others obey even though they are not subordinate or from them they transmit information, even though they would be competitors: it would then be necessary to remember that only the Law is able to appoint judge ; in this new Compliance era, companies would be judges, prosecutors, investigators! Maybe, if the Law says it, but if it didn't, it would be necessary to come back to this tautology ... But are we in such a radicalism? Moreover, do judges have "the prerogative" of judgment and the Law has not admitted this power for companies to judge for a long time? As soon as the procedure is there in Ex Ante and the control of the judge in Ex Post?
The second reason, internal to the company, situation on which the article focuses, is that the company investigates itself, judges itself, sanctions itself. However, the legal person expressing its will only through its organs, we underline in practice the difficulties for the same human being to formulate grievances, as he/she is the agent of the legal person, adressed to the natural person that he/she himself/herself is. The two interests of the two are not the same, are often opposed; how the secrets of one can be kept with respect to the other, represented by the same individual? ... It is all the mystery, even the artifice of legal personality that appears and we understand better that Compliance Law no longer wants to use this strange classical notion. Because all the rules of procedure cannot mask that to prosecute oneself does not make more sense than to contract with oneself. This conflict of interest is impossible to resolve because naming the same individual X then naming him/her Y, by declaring open the dispute between them does not make sense.
This dualism, which is impossible to admit when it comes to playing these functions with regard to corporate officers, can come back to life by setting up third parties who will carry secrets and oppositions. For example by the designation of two separate lawyers for the human being agent and the human being representative of the legal person, each lawyer being able to have secrets for each other and to oppose each other. These spaces of reconstitution of the so "natural" oppositions in procedure between the one who judges and the one who is judged can also take the technological form of platforms: where there is no longer anyone, where the process has replaced the procedure, there is no longer any human judgment. We can thus see that the fear of conflicts of interest is so strong that we resign ourselves to saying that only the machine would be "impartial", a derisory conception of impartiality, against which it is advisable to fight.
This then leads to a final question: can the company claim to exercise the jurisdictional power to prosecute and judge and investigate without even claiming to be a prosecutor, an investigating judge, or a court? The company's advantage would be to be able to escape the legal regime that classical Law attaches to its words, mainly the rights of the defense and the rights of action for others, the principle of publicity of justice for everyone, which expresses the link between procedure and democracy . When Facebook said on June 12, 2021 "react" to the decision of May 5, 2021 adopted by what would only be an Oversight Board to decide "as a consequence" of a 2-year suspension of Donald Trump's account, the art of qualifications seem to be used in order to avoid any regime constraint.
But this art of euphemism is very old. Thus the States, when they wanted to increase repression, presented the transformation of the system as a softening of it through the "decriminalization" of Economic Law, transferred from the criminal courts to the independent administrative agencies. The efficiency was greatly increased, since the guarantees of the Criminal Procedure ceased to apply. But 20 years later, Words found their way back to Things: under Criminal Law, slept the "criminal matter", which requires the same "Impartiality". In 1996, a judge once affirmed it and everything was changed. Let us therefore wait for what the Courts will say, since they are the masters of qualifications, as Article 12 of the French Code of Civil Procedure says, as Motulsky wrote it in 1972. Law has time.
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