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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, Compliance and conformity: distinguishing them to articulate them, Working Paper, February 2024.

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📝 this working paper was drawn up to serve as a basis for the article published in French in the Chronique MAFR -  Compliance Law, published in the Recueil Dalloz.  

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► Summary of this Working Paper: The words "conformité" and "compliance" are sometimes used interchangeably, presenting "conformité" as the translation into good legal French vocabulary of "compliance", which would come from the American system. This is not true, however, because each of these terms refers to two distinct and even opposing concepts. 

"conformity"' would require companies to show that they are actively obeying all the 'regulations' applicable to them, regardless of their content. "Compliance Law" is a new substantial branch of Law that derives its normativity from the "Monumental Goals" targeted by the political and public authorities: these monumental goals are intended to ensure that systems do not collapse in the future (Negative Monumental Goals), or even improve (Positive Monumental Goals). The systems concerned are banking, finance, energy, health, transport, digital and climate systems. The scope of Compliance Law is therefore both much more limited and more ambitious.

Distinguishing between the two allows us to put conformity back where it belongs, as a tool of Compliance Law. As such, conformity justifies the collation and correlation of information, with the algorithmic system playing a major role in this. On the other hand, the human concern that underpins Compliance Law justifies making training and the actions of in-house lawyers, attorneys and judges, central to it. The evidentiary system of Compliance that is currently being developed is based on evidentiary techniques rooted on the one hand in the tool of conformity and on the other in the culture of Compliance, which can be articulated as soon as they are no longer confused.

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🔓read the working paper below⤵️

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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, Conditions required to promote the "contractualisation" of the Law, Working Paper, June 2023.

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🎤This Working Paper has been done as a basis for the closing conference of the colloquia La contractualisation du droit. Acte II, organised by the Société de législation comparée (SLC) and the Procuradoria Geral do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (PGE-RJ), on 19, 20 and 21 June 2023.

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📝It is also the basis of the article that will be published.

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► English Summary of the Working Paper : 

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🔓read the Working Paper⤵️

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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, "Instaurer l'insécurité juridique comme principe, outil de prévention des crises systémiques catastrophiques totales" ("Establishing legal uncertainty as a principle and a tool for preventing total catastrophic systemic crises"), in G. Gerqueira, H. Fulchiron et N. Nord (eds.), Insécurité juridique : l'émergence d'une notion ?, Société de législation comparée, coll. "Colloques", vol. 53, 2023, pp. 153-167. 

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📝read the article (in French)

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🚧read the bilingual Working Papier which is the basis of the conference and this article

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🎤watch the conference of March 22, 2021 that took place in the Cour de cassation (French Court de cassation) and for which this reflection was globally led

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► English Summary of the article: "whatever it takes". In 2015, Mario Draghi used this formula to aim for the defence of the European currency, when the Euro was in danger of collapsing under the dance of the speculators who would be enriched by its collapse. Rarely has a formula been more violently political and more strongly prescriptive. It contributed to his being dubbed "Super Mario", as in the video game. The formula was used again in 2020 by the Président de la République Française (President of the French Republic) in the face of the financial turmoil caused by the health crisis that led to similar calculations. It goes beyond the mere "financial cost". With this formula, the President of the European Central Bank stated that the economic crisis in Europe was such that the institution would do everything in its power to put an end to it, without any limits; that all those who, by their behaviour, even supported by their legal prerogatives, in this case the speculators, because they were destroying the economic and financial system, would come up against this and would themselves be swept away by the Central Bank because the latter's mission, in that it is absolutely to safeguard the Euro itself, would prevail "quoi qu'il en coûte" ("whatever the cost"). At one point, the master stood up. If the royal position is the seated position, when he listens and judges, it is by rising that he shows his acceptance of also being the master, because he is in charge of more and will use everything to win.

More broadly, we might consider drawing up a positive concept of legal uncertainty (which is bound to please the Hegelians), increasing legal certainty: this would make it possible to associate a clearer legal regime with the hypotheses of legal uncertainty. Indeed, rather than sweeping Law under the carpet, which explains many of the tensions between the Conseil constitutionnel (French Constitutional Council) and the Conseil d'État (Council of State) on the one hand, and the legislator and the government on the other, concerning the "État d'urgence" ("State of emergency"), we could set out the conditions in which legal uncertainty makes it possible to set aside or limit rules.

The idea proposed is therefore that in "extraordinary situations", legal uncertainty would be a dimension, or even a principle which would be admissible. And developing this first point, it is proposed that the hypothesis of an "economic crisis" justifies a dimension, or even a principle of "legal uncertainty". But this first assertion needs to be tested. Is an economic crisis, a concept that needs to be defined, if it is to have such a major reversal effect, such an extraordinary 'situation'? Furthermore, to deal with this extraordinary situation constituted by an 'economic crisis', how much legal uncertainty would be legally acceptable, or even legally claimed? Could we even conceive of a reversal of principle that would bring applicable Law to an economic crisis under the aegis of legal uncertainty? In such a case, the question that then arises is to determine the conditions and criteria for emerging from the economic crisis, or even to determine the elements of perspective of an economic crisis, which could justify in advance the admission of an injection of legal uncertainty. Above all, Law has control over the future.

The economic crisis should therefore be legally defined as an exceptional situation, before stressing that Regulation and Compliance Law, because on the one hand we move from crisis to crisis and on the other hand the whole system aims to avoid and manage the future crisis in advance or to exclude it; this is particularly true of health and climate issues (the way the health crisis was managed was to 'decree' that the State should initiate an economic crisis), which means that legal insecurity is no longer seen as a distant exception, a failure to be combated, but as a lever that can be used to influence the future.

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► Référence complète : M.-A. Frison-Roche, "Fonder la compliance", in Revue de l'ACE, La compliance, n° spéc. n°157, septembre 2022, p.17-31.

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► Résumé de l'article : L'article traite le sujet en 20 étapes 

1. Pourquoi fonder les pratiques de compliance ? Pour des impératif pratiques 
2. Fonder les pratiques de compliance pour rendre supportables, car compréhensibles, les pouvoirs et les charges concentrés dans les outils de Compliance 
3. Fonder les pratiques de compliance pour maîtriser un savoir technique exponentiel 
4. Fonder les pratiques pour y trouver la part du Droit 
5. Fonder la Compliance sur les process d’efficacité 
6. Rendre supportable la Compliance fondée sur les process d’efficacité par un mix de procédure et d’éthique
7. Les professionnels de la Compliance fondée sur des process
8. La place particulière de l’avocat et du juge dans la Compliance fondée sur des process
9. Fonder la Compliance sur l’obligation de donner à voir par avance que l’on se conforme à la réglementation applicable
10. L’aporie de la Compliance fondée sur l’obligation de donner à voir par avance que l’on se conforme à la réglementation applicable 
11. Les charges engendrées de la Compliance fondée sur l’obligation de donner à voir par avance que l’on se conforme à la réglementation applicable 
12. L’impraticabilité de la Compliance fondée sur l’obligation de donner à voir par avance que l’on se conforme à la réglementation applicable
13. Fonder la Compliance sur des buts substantiels ponctuels
14. Les professionnels de la Compliance impliquées par la Compliance fondée sur des buts substantiels ponctuels 
15. Fonder la Compliance par des buts substantiels globaux et à venir
16. Fonder la Compliance par les Buts Monumentaux, négatifs et positifs
17. Les professionnels de la Compliance fondée sur les Buts Monumentaux
18. La place particulière de la population concernée et de l'Etat dans la Compliance fondée sur les Buts Monumentaux
19. La place particulière de l’avocat et du juge dans la Compliance fondée sur les Buts Monumentaux
20. L'avenir du Droit de l'Avenir

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📝lire l'article

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🚧lire le document de travail bilingue, doté de références techniques supplémentaires et de liens hypertextes, ayant servi de base à cet article

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lire la revue dans son intégralité

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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, "Les Buts Monumentaux, cœur battant du Droit de la Compliance" ("Monumental Goals, beating heart of Compliance Law"), in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Les Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance, coll. "Régulations & Compliance", Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Dalloz, 2022, p. 21-44.

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📝read the article (in French)

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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, Les Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance, in which this article is published

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► Summary of the article:  Compliance Law can be defined as the set of processes requiring companies to show that they comply with all the regulations that apply to them. It is also possible to  define this branch of Law by a normative heart: the "Monumental Goals". These explain the technical new legal solutions, thus made them clearer, accessible and anticipable. This definition is also based on a bet, that of caring for others that human beings can have in common, a universality. 

Through the Monumental Goals, appears a definition of Compliance Law that is new, original, and specific. This new term "Compliance", even in non-English vocabulary, in fact designates a new ambition: that a systemic catastrophe shall not be repeated in the future. This Monumental Goal was designed by History, which gives it a different dimension in the United States and in Europe. But the heart is common in the West, because it is always about detecting and preventing what could produce a future systemic catastrophe, which falls under "negative monumental goals", even to act so that the future is positively different ("positive monumental goals"), the whole being articulated in the notion of "concern for others", the Monumental Goals thus unifying Compliance Law.

In this, they reveal and reinforce the always systemic nature of Compliance Law, as management of systemic risks and extension of Regulation Law, outside of any sector, which makes solutions available for non-sector spaces, in particular digital space. Because wanting to prevent the future (preventing evil from happening; making good happen) is by nature political, Compliance Law by nature concretizes ambitions of a political nature, in particular in its positive monumental goals, notably effective equality between human beings, including geographically distant or future human beings.

The practical consequences of this definition of Compliance Law by Monumental Goals are immense. A contrario, this makes it possible to avoid the excesses of a "conformity law" aimed at the effectiveness of all applicable regulations, a very dangerous perspective. This makes it possible to select effective Compliance Tools with regard to these goals, to grasp the spirit of the material without being locked into its flow of letters. This leads to not dissociating the power required of companies and the permanent supervision that the public authorities must exercise over them.

We can therefore expect a lot from such a definition of Compliance Law by its Monumental Goals. It engenders an alliance between the Political Power, legitimate to enact the Monumental Goals, and the crucial operators, in a position to concretize them and appointed because they are able to do so. It makes it possible to find global legal solutions for global systemic difficulties that are a priori insurmountable, particularly in climate matters and for the effective protection of people in the now digital world in which we live. It expresses values that can unite human beings.

In this, Compliance Law built on Monumental Goals is also a bet. Even if the requirement of "conformity" is articulated with this present conception of what Compliance Law is, this conception based on Monumental Law is based on the human ability to be free, while conformity law supposes more the human ability to obey.

Therefore Compliance Law, defined by the Monumental Goals, is essential for our future, while conformity law is not.

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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Les Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance (Compliance Monumental Goals), coll. "Régulations & Compliance", Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Dalloz, 2022, 520 p.

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📘In parallel, the English version of this book, Compliance Monumental Goals, is published in the collection co-published by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant. 

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📅This book comes after a cycle of colloquia 2021 organised by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC)and its Universities partners. 

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📚This volume is one of the books dedicated to Compliance in the collection Régulations & Compliance: read the presentations of the other titles of this collection.

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► General presentation of the book: Seize Compliance by its mind: its Monumental Goals. The notion of "monumental goals" of Compliance was proposed in 2016 by Marie-Anne Frison-Roche📎!footnote-2696. It has become explicit in the texts and the resolution of cases, for example to fight against climate change, make human beings effectively equal, force to be extraterritorially vigilant about suppliers. 

Compliance Monumental Goals are targeted ex ante by regulations, contracts, CSR, and international treaties. Creating an alliance between business and political authorities, aiming for a new form of sovereignty. The presence in litigation of these Monumental Goals of global dimension renews the responsibilities and the Judge office. Describing and conceiving these Monumental Goals makes it possible to anticipate Compliance Law, which is more powerful every day.

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🏗️General construction of the book: The book opens with a double Introduction, the first summarizing the book (in free access) ​and the second, more substantial, proposing  the Monumental Goals as definition of Compliance Law putting them at its "beating heart", giving this new branch of law its originality and specificity, explaining what, in the History of the United States and Europe, gave birth to this singular corpus and justifies a substantial definition of Compliance Law. The concept of Monumental Goals is explained, justifying both systemic and political nature of Compliance Law, the practical consequences of which legal specific rules are thus better identified and limited, since Compliance Law does not lead to all-obedience. We can then determine what we can expect from this Law of the Future that is Compliance Law.

From there, the book unfolds in 5 titles.

A first Title is devoted to the "radioscopy" of this notion, in itself and branch of Law by branch of Law.

A second Title aims to measure how the Monumental Goals are questioned by a crisis, for example in a health situation, but not in that example, if they aggravate it and must be discarded, or if, on the contrary, they are exactly conceived for this hypothesis. of crisis, risks, catastrophes and that it is advisable to exploit them, in order, in this "test", to benefit from the alliance between the political authorities, public powers and crucial operators.

Once made explicit and tested, the Monumental Goals must find a sure way to be considered. Therefore, a third Title aims to measure in principle and in practice how the Proportionality method can help the integration of Compliance, thus giving a new dimension to the Law without dragging it into insecurity and illegitimate grabbing of powers.

But because Compliance Monumental Goals express a very great ambition, the question of a bearable, even beneficial relationship with the international competitiveness of companies, standards and systems must be opened. This is the object of the fourth Title.  

Finally, because the Monumental Goals express by nature a new ambition of the Law in a world which must not give up in what could be the prospect of its abyss, the fifth Title has for object the relationship between the Monumental Goals of Compliance and Sovereignty.

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► Understand the book through the Table of Contents and the summaries of each article:

DOUBLE INTRODUCTION

🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Résumé de l'ouvrage Les buts monumentaux du droit de la compliance (free access : click here to read this article (in French)) 

🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Les Buts Monumentaux, cœur battant du Droit de la Compliance

I. LA NOTION DE BUTS MONUMENTAUX DE LA COMPLIANCE ("THE IDEA OF COMPLIANCE MONUMENTAL GOALS") 

🕴️R.-O. Maistre, 📝Quels buts fondamentaux pour le régulateur dans un paysage audiovisuel et numérique en pleine mutation ?

🕴️A.V. Le Fur, 📝Intérêt et raison d’être de l’entreprise : quelle articulation avec les Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance ?  

🕴️A. Le Goff, 📝La part des banques dans la concrétisation des Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance

🕴️J.-F. Vaquieri,📝Les "Buts Monumentaux" perçus par l'entreprise. L'exemple d'Enedis

🕴️M. Malaurie-Vignal, 📝Les Buts Monumentaux du droit du marché. Réflexion sur la méthode

🕴️D. de La Garanderie, 📝Sur les Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance sociale

 🕴️C. Peicuti & 🕴️J. Beyssade, 📝La féminisation des postes à responsabilité dans les entreprises comme But de la Compliance. Exemple du secteur bancaire

🕴️I. Gavanon, 📝Le droit des données personnelles dans l’économie numérique à l’épreuve des Buts Monumentaux

🕴️B. Petit, 📝Les Buts Monumentaux du droit (européen) des relations de travail : un système mouvant aux équilibres à consolider   

🕴️G. Beaussonie, 📝Droit pénal et Compliance font-ils système ?

🕴️Ch. Huglo, 📝À quelles conditions le Droit climatique pourrait-il constituer un But Monumental prioritaire ?

II. MISE EN OEUVRE DES BUTS MONUMENTAUX DE LA COMPLIANCE EN ARTICULATION DU PRINCIPE MAJEUR DE LA PROPORTIONNALITÉ ("IMPLEMENTATION OF COMPLIANCE MONUMENTAL GOALS IN ARTICULATION OF THE MAJOR PRINCIPLE OF PROPORTIONALITY") 

🕴️L. Rapp, 📝Conformité, proportionnalité et normativité  

🕴️B. Bär-Bouyssière, 📝Les obstacles pratiques à la place effective de la proportionnalité dans la Compliance

🕴️A. Mendoza-Caminade, 📝Compliance, proportionnalité et évaluation

🕴️L. Meziani, 📝Proportionnalité en Compliance, garant de l’ordre public en entreprise

🕴️M. Segonds, 📝Compliance, proportionnalité et sanction 

 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Définition du principe de proportionnalité et définition du Droit de la Compliance 

 III. LES BUTS MONUMENTAUX DE LA COMPLIANCE ÉPROUVÉS PAR LES SITUATIONS DE CRISES ("THE COMPLIANCE MONUMENTAL GOALS TESTED BY CRISIS SITUATIONS")

🕴️A. Oumedjkane, A. Tehrani et P. Idoux, 📝Normes publiques et Compliance en temps de crise : les Buts Monumentaux à l'épreuve. Éléments pour une problématique

🕴️J. Bonnet, 📝La crise, occasion de saisir la Compliance comme mode de communication des autorités publiques  

🕴️N. Sudres, 📝Gel hydroalcoolique, Covid-19 et Compliance. Des insuffisances de la démarche de conformité à l'émergence d'îlots de Compliance

🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Place et rôle des entreprises dans la création et l'effectivité du Droit de la Compliance en cas de crise 

IV. EFFECTIVITÉ DES BUTS MONUMENTAUX DE LA COMPLIANCE ET COMPÉTITIVITÉ INTERNATIONALE ("EFFECTIVENESS OF COMPLIANCE MONUMENTAL GOALS AND INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS") 

🕴️B. Deffains, 📝L’enjeu économique de compétitivité internationale de la Compliance

🕴️J.-Ch. Roda, 📝Compliance, enquêtes internes et compétitivité internationale : quels risques pour les entreprises françaises (à la lumière du droit antitrust) ?

🕴️F. Marty, 📝L'apport des programmes de conformité à la compétitivité internationale : une perspective concurrentielle

🕴️S. Lochmann, 📝Les agences de notation ESG et l'effectivité de la Compliance face à la compétitivité internationale

🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Appréciation du lancement d'alerte et de l'obligation de vigilance au regard de la compétitivité internationale  

V. LA COMPLIANCE PORTÉE PAR LES BUTS MONUMENTAUX, NOUVELLE VOIE DE SOUVERAINETÉ ("COMPLIANCE SUPPORTED BY MONUMENTAL GOALS AND NEW WAY OF SOVEREIGNTY") 

🕴️R. Bismuth, 📝Compliance et souveraineté : relations ambigües

🕴️L. Benzoni, 📝Commerce international, compétitivité des entreprises et souveraineté : vers une économie politique de la Compliance

🕴️M.-A. Boursier, 📝Les Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance : mode d'expression des États

🕴️S. Pottier, 📝Pour une Compliance européenne, vecteur d'affirmation économique et politique

🕴️Ch. André, 📝Souveraineté étatique, souveraineté populaire : quel contrat social pour la Compliance ?

🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Le principe de proximité systémique active, corollaire du renouvellement du principe de souveraineté par le Droit de la Compliance

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► Référence complète : Frison-Roche, M.-A., Notes prises pour la synthèse sur le vif de la conférence L'office du juge et les causes systémiques, in Cycle de conférences, Penser l'office du juge, Grand Chambre de la Cour de cassation, 9 mai 2022, 17h-19h.

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► Résumé des notes prises au fur et à mesure de la conférence : les trois juges, Christophe Soulard, Président de la Chambre criminelle de la Cour de cassation, Fabien Raynaud, Conseiller d'Etat, et François Ancel, Président de la Chambre internationale de la Cour d'appel de Paris, invités à réfléchir et réagir à une hypothèse, à savoir l'existence parmi les cas qui leur sont apportés par les parties, sont intervenus à la fois d'une façon très diverse, très originale et exprimant pourtant l'unicité de l'art de juger.

Les notes prises ci-dessous montrent que les juges ont conscience que les temps ont changé et que, de plus en plus, les "systèmes" sont présents dans les causes qui, construites par les parties, leur sont présentées (1). Leurs analyses, réactions et propositions ont montré à ceux qui les écoutaient que pour appréhender des causes systémiques, les juges doivent être expérimentés (2). Ils ont eu souci de fixer des critères pour identifier la nature systémique des causes parmi la multitude de celles qu'ils traitent, justifiant alors un traitement procédural et décisionnaire particulier (3). L'auditoire a ainsi pu mesurer la part qui revient aux parties (4), puisque le système est dans la construction des faits de la cause et la part qui revient à l'office du juge (5).

Il apparaît alors que par un effet de miroir, l'office du juge se déplace de l'Ex Post vers l'Ex Ante (6), les trois juges décrivant et proposant des mécanismes concrets pour appréhender en Ex Ante cette dimension systémique et y répondre (7). Ils soulignent que cela s'opère en collaboration avec les avocats, dans une instruction élargie et le débat contradictoire (8), dans une collaboration qui s'opère en amont (9). Les trois magistrats ont recherché les techniques procédurales pour accroître la plus grande considération des systèmes (10) et les nouvelles organisations à mettre en place pour répondre à cette dimension systémique de certaines causes (11). Pour ce faire, une dialectique est à opérer vers, à la fois, de l'informel mais aussi plus de formel (12), l'ensemble produisant une meilleure réception méthodologique des systèmes par les juges (13) par une plus grande compréhension entre les juges, quel que soit leur niveau et les droits substantiels en cause, les autorités et les parties systémiques (14).

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🎥Voir la vidéo de l'ensemble de la conférence

🎥 Voir la vidéo de la synthèse réalisée sur le vif par Marie-Anne Frison-Roche au terme de la conférence

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📝Lire l'article de Marie-Anne Frison-Roche rendant compte au Dalloz de la conférence. 

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🚧 lire le document de travail L'hypothèse de la "cause systémique, réalisé préalablement à la conférence, pour préparer celle-ci.

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✏️ lire les notes exhaustives prises pendant la conférence⤵️

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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, The Hypothesis of the category of Systemic Cases brought before the Judge, Working Paper, October 2021 and April 2022.

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► This working paper has served as the basis for an introductory speech 🎤L'hypothèse de la catégorie des causes systémiques (The Hypothesis of the cateory of Systemic Cases), in a more general conference which I coordinated and moderated, 🧱L'office du juge et les causes systémiques, which is part of a general cycle covering Penser l'office du juge, specific conference attending the 9th May 2002 into the Grand Chamber of the Cour de cassation.  

This Working Paper was drawn up in October 2021 to build the conference on the assumption that among the diversity of "cases" brought to the courts by litigants, some constitute a specific category: "systemic cases", justifying treatment that is both specific (in that they are systemic, calling in particular for procedural solutions common to all and distinguishable from the treatment of non-systemic cases) and common treatment beyond the diversity of judges who deal with them (judicial and administrative judges, criminal and non-criminal judges, French and non-French judges, judges of the member-States legal orders and European Union judges, etc.). 

This working paper does not aim to deal with the whole subject, i.e. both to determine this category of "systemic causes" and the consequences that must be drawn from it for the judge's office, since that is the very purpose of the conference, which is built around several presentations: it aims to deal with the first part of the subject, i.e. the very existence of this new processual category, which is "systemic causes", leaving for other work the practical consequences to be drawn from it in the processual treatment that it calls for.

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📝This Working Paper is also the basis of a forthcoming article

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► Summary of the Working Paper: xx

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Read below the developments⤵️

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► Référence complète : M.-A. Frison-Roche, Concevoir le pouvoir, document de travail, décembre 2021

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📝 ce document de travail sert de base à un article à paraître dans les Mélanges élaborés en hommage à Emmanuel Gaillard. 

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► Résumé du document de travail : En 1985, l'œuvre d'Emmanuel Gaillard sortit sous le titre Le pouvoir en droit privé 📎!footnote-2418, mais lors de sa soutenance en 1981, sa thèse dirigée par le Doyen Cornu avait pour titre La notion de pouvoir en droit privé 📎!footnote-2419.

Redonnons pleine force au titre originel du travail de thèse.  

La suppression du terme notion suppose peut-être qu'en définissant quelque chose l'essentiel est fait, qu'il y aurait comme un pléonasme en visant La notion de pouvoir et Le pouvoir, le Droit aimant faire économie de mots.  

Mais c'est bien une conception renouvelée, plus simple et plus puissante de la notion de pouvoir, contenant ainsi tout le régime nécessairement imputé, que cet ouvrage imposa, éclairant désormais le droit positif. Tandis qu'à l'inverse la définition qu'en offrit Emmanuel Gaillard excède le Droit privé. L'on aurait volontiers plaidé pour conserver l'exergue du terme Notion, proposant plutôt de se libérer de la mention du seul droit privé ....

Peut-être était-ce parce que la notion est immense que dans cette recherche fondatrice son emprise fut restreinte au droit privé, l'auteur devant déjà rendre compte de la lourde multiplicité des manifestations dans cette partie-là du Droit ; ou bien était-ce parce que la notion de "pouvoir" étant si familière au Droit public qu'elle aurait eu dans celui-ci moins besoin de définition (d'ailleurs si diversement proposée dans cette zone plus politique, qui veille déjà par principe à distinguer les pouvoirs, ceux-ci devant toujours être pluriels afin d'être séparés), et qu'il était donc raisonnable de vouloir parvenir à une seule notion de pouvoir dans ce Droit privé où le droit subjectif est plus familier. 

Pourtant la définition élaborée par Emmanuel Gaillard de la notion de pouvoir comme ce qui est une prérogative remise, par la loi ou le contrat, entre les mains de celui qui en est investi au bénéfice, au moins partiel, d'autrui, rend compte aussi bien du Droit public que du Droit privé. Cela participe même à la solidité de cette thèse et explique sa prospérité aujourd'hui dans un Droit où la distinction entre le Droit privé et le Droit public s'affaiblit.

La puissance de cette définition tient à sa simplicité. Les esprits simples et braves sont souvent les plus fructueux. Comme le souligne Gérard Cornu dans sa préface, l'auteur, notamment parce qu'il s'appuie davantage sur du droit positif, par exemple celui relatif aux pouvoirs des mandataires sociaux, ne s'abîme pas dans des discussions entre des auteurs pour finir par préférer plutôt l'un que l'autre. Il arrive à une définition proche de celle de notre expérience quotidienne : celle que nous connaissons lorsque nous retirons un pli pour autrui et que le préposé nous demande à quel titre nous prétendons faire cet acte en son nom. Nous lui montrons alors notre "pouvoir", cette puissance juridique de le faire pour le bénéfice de celui auquel est adressé le courrier et pouvons ainsi exercer la puissance de retirer la missive, pourtant personnelle. Quand le sens juridique et le sens commun se rejoignent, c'est de bon augure, non seulement sur la forme parce que chacun peut le comprendre et que le Droit doit rester chose compréhensible mais encore sur le fond parce que chacun doit pouvoir contrôler l'exercice d'un pouvoir qui se concrétise pour et sur autrui. Car cette lettre qui s'adresse à autrui, celui qui a pu la prendre par le pouvoir qui lui en a été conféré, pourrait ainsi aussi bien la décacheter et la lire puis la détruire ou la donner au pire ennemi de celui auquel elle était adressée. Dans le pouvoir, il y a toujours la puissance, et le danger pour autrui que celle-ci contient. 

Cette définition très juridique de ce qu'est le pouvoir met à distance non seulement le titulaire de son propre intérêt mais encore cela canalise la puissance qui lui est ainsi accordée vers celui qui en bénéficie. En cela, non seulement Emmanuel Gaillard distingua le pouvoir et le droit subjectif, mais il cerna le juste volume de puissance requis pour que ce pouvoir remplisse effectivement cette "mission", à travers la notion d'abus de pouvoir, lorsque le titulaire utilise pour d'autres bénéficiaires cette puissance qui ne lui fut conférée que pour cela.

Plus encore, cette conception permet de distinguer le pouvoir de la force discrétionnaire, car le titulaire du pouvoir exerce de ce fait une puissance, en agissant pour autrui, en décidant pour autrui, en décidant sur autrui. Parce que le pouvoir est indissociable de la puissance mais que la puissance doit rester le moyen du pouvoir et pas davantage, le Droit va produire les anticorps que sont non seulement la théorie de l'abus de pouvoir mais encore une responsabilité si forte que des comptes doivent toujours être rendus, soit à cet autrui pour lequel tout est fait soit devant un tiers. Car ce troisième est souvent là et dès le départ, le juge des tutelles par exemple : car le pouvoir fut mis en place en raison de la faiblesse du bénéficiaire, en lui-même et par la situation, il faut donc un tiers, impartial et désintéressé pour, dès le départ, veiller à la bonne exécution, sans même qu'il y ait litige. En cela, comme cette thèse est utile pour penser ce qu'est aujourd'hui la Supervision !  

Cette thèse si nette, si simple et si forte dépasse le droit civil. Elle est à la fois beaucoup plus restrictive que la définition plus factuelle et politique de ce qu'est le pouvoir, qui serait la possibilité de faire quelque chose, et beaucoup plus ample que les définitions usuelles puisqu'elle embrasse et légitime de jure toutes les situations où une personne va agir juridiquement pour le bénéfice d'autrui.  Le Doyen Cornu montre d'ailleurs en deux phrases qu'une telle notion de pouvoir restitue aussi bien l'office du juge, qui n'a de pouvoir sur autrui que pour le servir 📎!footnote-2420. La définition correspond à la mission de celui qui n'a de puissance que pour remplir son office. Cela convient si bien à la conception que nous avons aujourd'hui de l'administration, surtout si elle prend la forme d'autorités indépendantes.

Plus encore le pouvoir contient ainsi dans sa définition même sa propre limite, puisqu'autrui y est présent : le titulaire n'a de puissance que pour servir autrui. Dès lors, ce n'est une puissance que parce que c'est une sorte de charge. Emmanuel Gaillard utilise immédiatement le terme : "Un individu se voit confier une charge qu'il exerce dans un intérêt au moins partiellement distinct du sien propre" 📎!footnote-2422. Il se réfère d'ailleurs souvent au tuteur, dont Carbonnier, qui en réforma le Droit en la matière 📎!footnote-2456, souligna que pèse sur lui une charge publique puisque l'État lui confie un enfant. De la même façon l'autorité parentale est une charge des parents au bénéfice des enfants. D'une façon plus générale, le pouvoir est une charge que le Droit fait peser sur une personne afin qu'elle satisfasse les intérêts d'un autre.

Cette définition offerte par Emmanuel Gaillard en 1981, ancrée dans le Droit civil qu'en ce que celui-ci est le Droit commun des systèmes juridiques, est prémonitoire du Droit de la Régulation et de la Compliance, tel qu'il se déploie aujourd'hui. Il suffirait de continuer les phrases, comme si elles avaient été à demi-écrites, pour les finir 40 ans plus tard et y trouver les mécanismes de Supervision des autorités publiques sur les entreprises qui sont désormais en place non pas pour réduire leur pouvoir mais pour s'assurer en permanence qu'elles l'exercent bien au bénéfice d'autrui 📎!footnote-2457. Toute l'évolution du Droit des sociétés, du Droit financier est là. L'on voit aussi entre les lignes de l'ouvrage qui développe la notion de devoir 📎!footnote-2421, ce que le droit positif élabore aujourd'hui à travers notamment le "devoir de vigilance", cette charge personnelle au bénéfice d'autrui (I).

La définition du pouvoir ainsi conçu contient en elle-même son régime et permet de mieux l'anticiper aujourd'hui : parce que le titulaire n'exerce le pouvoir que pour autrui,  au moins partiellement, il doit consubstantiellement en rendre compte, la responsabilité, n'étant qu'une forme de cette accountability ; parce que ce service doit être effectif et qu'autrui doit en bénéficier pleinement, car contrairement au droit subjectif qui permet au titulaire de librement de ne pas user de sa puissance, le pouvoir n'a jamais été la "plus absolue" disponibilité d'user de sa puissance : il est même l'inverse. Il est l'expression d'une puissance affectée à un but, contraignant le titulaire à utiliser sa puissance à cette fin.  Mais il faut pareillement que ce titulaire ait toute la puissance pour le faire, car sinon la notion même de "pouvoir" n'a plus de sens. C'est la définition qu'il convient de donner au principe de proportionnalité : celui sur lequel pèse le pouvoir doit avoir plus de puissance qu'il n'est nécessaire mais toute la puissance nécessaire pour atteindre le but pour lequel ce pouvoir lui a été remis afin qu'autrui en tire plein bénéfice (II). 

Dans le droit positif d'aujourd'hui, l'on retrouve la définition du pouvoir comme un devoir, non seulement en Droit privé mais encore en Droit public, notamment parce que les puissances pures, c'est-à-dire ne rendant pas compte de l'usage de leur puissance, régressent tandis que le souci d'autrui s'accroît. Le temps des pouvoirs discrétionnaires est révolu, l'indépendance accrue de ceux qui exercent du pouvoir sur autrui exigeant qu'ils rendent des comptes. Au-delà de cette reddition des comptes, la responsabilité personnelle de celui qui a le pouvoir de servir autrui est en train de se mettre en place. Mais, sans doute parce que le Droit est lent à se mouvoir, l'idée corrélative comme quoi le titulaire du pouvoir doit avoir toute la puissance requise pour mener à bien sa mission est quant à elle moins ancrée :  le Droit n'a donc fait qu'une partie du chemin en sanctionnant les excès du pouvoir, comme le montra Emmanuel Gaillard, quand le titulaire utilise sa puissance à d'autres fins,  mais n'a pas encore clairement posé que le titulaire - parfois forcé - d'un pouvoir est légitime à  utiliser tous  les moyens requis pour atteindre le résultat pour lequel un pouvoir, c'est-à-dire une charge et un devoir, lui a été conféré.  

Sans doute faut-il lire une nouvelle fois la thèse d'Emmanuel Gaillard dans toutes ses potentialités, pour en imaginer la lecture que nous pourrions aujourd'hui faire de ce qu'il aurait pu écrire comme sur des pages blanches qui s'écriraient toutes seules, une thèse magique où tout est déjà là, une thèse si courte (250 pages) et si belle, si dense qu'elle contient déjà le Droit qui vient. Droit de l'Avenir 📎!footnote-2458 où il y doit y avoir beaucoup plus de responsabilité au bénéfice d'autrui📎!footnote-2423 et de pouvoirs puisque cette notion inclut autrui qui en est le bénéficiaire. Droit de l'Avenir où Emmanuel Gaillard sera présent, notamment grâce à ce travail de doctrine offert en 1981.  Pour que, concrètement ceux que l'on charge de veiller sur autrui, par exemple aujourd'hui toutes les entreprises contraintes par le Droit de la Compliance de veiller sur autrui afin que celui-ci ne soit pas anéanti par la haine dans l'espace numérique, par la corruption dans le système économique ou par le changement climatique dans un futur projeté, ne se voient pas contester par le même Droit les moyens d'exercer au profit d'autrui ce pouvoir, par exemple lorsque cela implique de "juger". Puisque le doyen Cornu lui-même soulignait l'identité des deux offices.

Lire les développement ci-dessous⤵

► Référence complète : Frison-Roche, M.-A.,  Droit, finance, autorité. Sociologie comparée des autorités de marchés financiers,  recherches menées puis rapport rédigé pour le Laboratoire de sociologie juridique, Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), remis au GIP Mission de recherche Droit et justice, septembre 1999, dactyl., 117 p. 

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📝 Lire la table des matières de l'ouvrage. 

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📝 Lire le résumé et la synthèse de l'ouvrage en 4 pages. 

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📝 Lire le rapport

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►Lire les deux monographies accompagnant le rapport :

📝 Bouthinon-Dumas, H., Le rôle des autorités de marchés financiers dans la crise asiatique vue à travers la presse

📝 V. Magnier, Les autorités de marchés financiers aux Etats-Unis. Droit, juge et autorité de marché

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📝 Lire les synthèses concernant les différents pays étudiés

📝 Lire la grille d'entretien semi-ouvert

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►  Full Reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., Ex Ante Responsibility, Working Paper, December 2021.

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📝This Working Paper has been the basis for an article written in French in the Archives de Philosophie du droit (APD), in the book La Responsabilité (2022).

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►  Working Paper Summary: Quel est le temps auquel s'articule la responsabilité ? La question est si classique que toutes les réponses ont été dessinées : si l'on est responsable plus aisément par rapport au temps, car l'on peut alors plus aisément faire un lien entre la situation appréhendée, sa réalisation dans le passé la rendant plus facilement connaissable, et le poids de "responsabilité" que l'on impute sur une personne, l'on peut articuler la responsabilité avec le futur. Si l'on brise le poids de cette responsabilité avec un évènement ou une situation, par exemple. Le Principe Responsabilité de Jonas ou l'Ethique de la Responsabilité font ainsi voyager la Responsabilité dans le temps, par un rapport entre le Droit et l'Ethique. 

D'ailleurs l'on pourrait soutenir que le Droit peut faire ce qu'il veut et imputer une responsabilité à quiconque pour le temps qu'il désigne, par exemple désigne comme porteur d'une responsabilité, c'est-à-dire d'un poids, celui qu'il veut. Le "responsable" serait alors le titulaire d'une sorte de "poids pur", qui le charge parce que le Droit l'a voulu pour le temps qu'il veut, par exemple un devoir d'agir pour que le futur soit dessiné comme le veut le Droit, alors même que le Responsable n'a rien à se reprocher dans le passé. 

Mais les Cours constitutionnelle défendent un rapport minimal entre la Responsabilité et le poids que celle-ci fait porter une personne, fut-t-elle morale, gardant ainsi le lien consubstantiel entre le Droit et la Morale, la technique juridique de la Responsabilité ne pouvant équivaloir à celle d'un prélèvement obligatoire.

Ainsi l'idée d'une Responsabilité Ex Ante est simple dans son principe (I). Elle est celle d'un poids juridiquement posé sur une personne soit par elle-même (engagement), soit par la Loi ou par le Juge sur une personne de faire quelque chose pour que n'advienne pas quelque chose qui adviendrait ou pour qu'advienne quelque chose qui n'adviendrait pas si elle ne le faisait pas.

Mais les conditions juridiques pour admettre un tel poids alors même que le lien avec une situation passée serait brisé est plus difficile (II). On continue certes continuer à voir dans le futur le passé, ce qui facilite le voyage dans le temps, et fonda par exemple le contrôle Ex Ante du contrôle des concentrations. Mais l'on peut se briser même de cette facilité et regarder non plus le rapport entre le passé et le futur, mais le présent et le futur : ce que l'on sait déjà aujourd'hui du futur, ce qui met en jeu le rapport entre le Droit et la Science ; ce que l'on observe de l'emprise de la personne présente sur le moment présent, c'est-à-dire le Pouvoir, ce qui fait en jeu le rapport entre le Droit et l'Economie politique.

Dans cette dimension-là, la contrainte de la Responsabilité Ex Ante est alors maniée par le Juge, dont l'office lui-même devient un office Ex Ante. Les pouvoirs obligés Ex Ante par une telle responsabilité maniée par le Juge étaient les personnes en situation de pouvoir, sont non seulement les entreprises, mais encore les Etats, qui perdent le privilège - partagé avec les contractants - de disposer juridiquement du futur, et notamment en leur sein le Législateur. 

Une telle révolution, qui se déroule sous nos yeux, s'explique parce qu'il faut agir maintenant pour que le futur ne soit pas catastrophique. La science nous informe qu'il le sera entéléchiquement. Il est donc juridiquement requis de désigner des responsables, non pas parce qu'ils auraient fait quelque chose, la dimension Ex Post n'étant pas le sujet, mais pour qu'ils fassent quelque chose, la Responsabilité Ex Ante étant un élément central de cette nouvelle branche du Droit qu'est le Droit de la Compliance. 

♾️ follow Marie-Anne Frison-Roche on LinkedIn

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► Full Reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., Monumental Goals, beating heart of Compliance Law, Working Paper, August 2021

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📝This Working Paper is the basis for the article, "Les buts monumentaux, cœur battant du droit de la compliance", constituting the introduction ⤵

📕in its French version, of the book Les buts monumentaux de la Compliance, in  the Series 📚Régulations & Compliance

 📘in its English version, of the book, Compliance Monumental Goals, in the Series 📚Compliance & Regulation

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► Summary of the Working Paper:

Compliance Law can be defined as the set of processes requiring companies to show that they comply with all the regulations that apply to them. It is also possible to  define this branch of Law by a normative heart: the "Monumental Goals". These explain the technical new legal solutions, thus made them clearer, accessible and anticipable. This definition is also based on a bet, that of caring for others that human beings can have in common, a universality. 

Through the Monumental Goals, appears a definition of Compliance Law that is new, original, and specific. This new term "Compliance", even in non-English vocabulary, in fact designates a new ambition: that a systemic catastrophe shall not be repeated in the future. This Monumental Goal was designed by History, which gives it a different dimension in the United States and in Europe. But the heart is common in the West, because it is always about detecting and preventing what could produce a future systemic catastrophe, which falls under "negative monumental goals", even to act so that the future is positively different ("positive monumental goals"), the whole being articulated in the notion of "concern for others", the Monumental Goals thus unifying Compliance Law.

In this, they reveal and reinforce the always systemic nature of Compliance Law, as management of systemic risks and extension of Regulation Law, outside of any sector, which makes solutions available for non-sector spaces, in particular digital space. Because wanting to prevent the future (preventing evil from happening; making good happen) is by nature political, Compliance Law by nature concretizes ambitions of a political nature, in particular in its positive monumental goals, notably effective equality between human beings, including geographically distant or future human beings.

The practical consequences of this definition of Compliance Law by Monumental Goals are immense. A contrario, this makes it possible to avoid the excesses of a "conformity law" aimed at the effectiveness of all applicable regulations, a very dangerous perspective. This makes it possible to select effective Compliance Tools with regard to these goals, to grasp the spirit of the material without being locked into its flow of letters. This leads to not dissociating the power required of companies and the permanent supervision that the public authorities must exercise over them.

We can therefore expect a lot from such a definition of Compliance Law by its Monumental Goals. It engenders an alliance between the Political Power, legitimate to enact the Monumental Goals, and the crucial operators, in a position to concretize them and appointed because they are able to do so. It makes it possible to find global legal solutions for global systemic difficulties that are a priori insurmountable, particularly in climate matters and for the effective protection of people in the now digital world in which we live. It expresses values that can unite human beings.

In this, Compliance Law built on Monumental Goals is also a bet. Even if the requirement of "conformity" is articulated with this present conception of what Compliance Law is, this conception based on Monumental Law is based on the human ability to be free, while conformity law supposes more the human ability to obey.

Therefore Compliance Law, defined by the Monumental Goals, is essential for our future, while conformity law is not.

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Read the developments below⤵️

Full reference : Frison-Roche, M.-A., Questionnaire de Proust (Proust's Quiz), in Droit & Littérature, n°5, p.37-38, Lextenso, 2021.

The chosen topic for this volume is Proust. 

Read (in French)

See its presentation on LinkedIn (in French)

Full Reference : Frison-Roche, M.-A., Rights, primary and natural Compliance Tools, Working Paper, July  2020.

This Working paper is the basis for an article published in the collective book  Compliance Tools .

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There was a time when Regulatory techniques  were above all only calculations of the best tarifications, taken up by monopolistic companies, while Compliance techniques were only obedience to all rules governing us. All this could therefore only be business of abacus and badine, used by engineers and consisted only of mechanical reflexes of "conformity" to all kinds of rules with the corset ensuring that everyone is bent in front of them!footnote-1946. In the perspective of a Regulation and Compliance thus conceived, that is to say effective, it would not be necessary to insert prerogatives for people, since these could only be sources of inefficiency, of cost. and protest, where the order would come from figures set in advance and controlled processes.

Systems have since evolved to integrate these prerogatives of each person: rights. Is this evolution really acquired? Maybe more effectively in Regulation Law than in its extension which is Compliance Law. This may be surprising since Compliance Law, in that it extends Regulatory Law in enterprises should, on the contrary, promote rights by meeting the enterprise, which is a group of people ....!footnote-1986 . But the modern reluctance to define the enterprise (and the company) as a group of people and the preference given to a definition of the company (and the enterprise) as an "asset", a "good" of which investors would be the owners, maybe explains the sidelining of rights not only in Regulatory Law but also in Compliance Law even though it is being deployed in the space of the enterprise!footnote-1987.

In addition, if Regulation has long been the subject of a branch of Law in which rights have full place, the presentation of Compliance as "conformity", that is to say the proven assurance of obedience to all the applicable rules, leaves no space for the prerogatives of people, which appear rather as resistance to the obedience that would be expected of them. There again, the expectation of what would be a good ratio of conformity between behaviors and prescriptions would be obtained by a "design", data processing being the new form of calculation, improved by precision tools where the being human is not required!footnote-1989. His fallibility and the little confidence which one can place in him leads even to exclude the people and to conceive Compliance system between machines, not only to alert of the failures, but also to manufacture the "regulations" and to connect those. here, in a "regulatory fabric" without a jump stitch, entirely enveloping human beings!footnote-1990.

It would therefore be with regret, and probably because some constitutional jurisdictions still attach some value to fundamental rights that the systems of "conformity" of behavior to the rules make some room for the prerogatives of people, their more essential rights. It is sometimes said that this is part of the cost. It would therefore be as by "forcing" that rights would exist in Compliance systems, a kind of price that the effectiveness of Compliance must pay as a tribute to the Rule of Law principle!footnote-1991.

If in a poor definition Compliance is conceived in this only "conformity", leading to a landscape in which the behaviors of the people adjust to the rules governing the situations, Compliance being only the most "effective way" to ensure the application of the rules, in a mechanical perspective of Law, then it would effectively be necessary to reduce the prerogatives of people to a minimal part, because any "additional cost" is intended to disappear, even if it is produced here by constitutional requirements. In the looming battle between the effectiveness of the application of rules and the concern for the legal prerogatives of people who should above all obey and not claim their rights, especially their right not to obey , or their right to keep secret in Compliance techniques which is based on the centralization of information, the effectiveness of efficiency could only, by the very power of this tautology, prevail!footnote-1988... 

The defeat would not be total, however, collaboration would still be possible and active between people availing themselves of their rights and Compliance Law. Indeed, in many respects, if rights have been recognized in Compliance systems, it is not only because Compliance Law, like any branch of Law, can only be deployed with respect for fundamental rights. kept by fundamental legal texts, but also because of the effectiveness of rights as " Compliance Tools".

Indeed, because they constitute a very effective "tool" to ensure the entire functioning of a system whose goals are so difficult to achieve, because every effort must be made to achieve these goals, the public authorities not only rely on the power of crucial operators, but also distribute prerogatives to people who, thus encouraged, activate the Compliance system and participate in the achievement of the "monumental goals". Rights can prove to be the most effective tools to effectively achieve the goals set, to such an extent that they can be considered as "primary tools"  (I).

But it is necessary to be more ambitious, even to reverse the perspective. Indeed because all the Monumental Goals by which Compliance Law is defined can be reduced to the protection of people, that is to say to the effectiveness of their prerogatives, by a mirror effect between rights. given by Law to persons and the rights which constitute the very purpose of all Compliance Law, in particular the protection of all human beings, even if they are in a situation of great weakness, rights become a "natural tool" of Compliance Law (II).

Rights are the Compliance Law future. 

Full reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., La Compliance, in Racine, J.-B. (ed.), Le droit économique au XXIe siècle. Notions et enjeux, Coll. Droit & Economie, LGDJ-Lextenso, 2020, pp. 97-108

Read the article (in French)

Read the bilingual working paper, enriched with additional developments, technical references and hyperlinks, on which this article is based

Read a general presentation of the book in which this article has been published

See the other books published in this collection founded and directed by Marie-Anne Frison-Roche. 

This working paper served as a basis for an interview organized by Olivia Dufour in French in Actu-juridiques-Lextenso on 11st of January 2021. 

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Full reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, Se tenir bien dans l'espace numérique, in Penser le droit de la pensée. Mélanges en l'honneur de Michel Vivant, Lexis Nexis and Dalloz, 2020, pp. 155-168.

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📝Read the article (in French)

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🚧Read the working paper, written in English, on which this article is based, with additional developments, technical references, and hyperlinks

English summary of the article: The digital space is one of the scarce spaces not framed by a specific branch of Law, Freedom also offering opportunity to its actors to not "behave well", that is to express and diffuse broadly and immediately hateful thoughts through Hate speechs, which remained before in private or limited circles. The intimacy of Law and of the legal notion of Person is broken: Digital permits to individuals or organizations to act as demultiplied and anonymous characters, digital depersonalized actors who carry behaviors that are hurtful to other's dignity. 

Against that, Compliance Law offers an appropriate solution: internalizing in digital crucial operators the mission to disciplinary and substantially hold the digital space. The digital space has been structured by powerful firms able to maintain order. Because Law must not reduce digital space to be only a neutral market of digital prestations, these crucial operators, like social networks or search engines, must be forced to substantially control behaviors. It could be about an obligation of internet users to act with their face uncover, "real identity" policy controlled by firms, and to respect others' rights, privacy rights, dignity, intellectual property rights. In their Regulatory function, digital crucial firms must be supervised by public authorities. 

Thus, Compliance law substantially defined is the protector of the person as "subject of law" in the digital space, by the respect that others must have, this space passing from the status of free space to the one of civilized space, in which everyone is obliged to behave well. 

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Read to go further: 

• Frison-Roche, M.-A., L'apport du Droit de la Compliance à la gouvernance d'Internet, 2019
• Frison-Roche, M.-A. (dir.), Internet, un espace d'interrégulation, 2016

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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, The dreamed Compliance Law, Working Paper, June 2020. 

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This Working Paper, "The Dreamed Compliance Law", is the basis for an article, written in French, "La compliance" (Compliance), inserted in the collective work to be published under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Racine, Le Droit économique du XXIème siècle (The XXIe century Economic Law , in the Serie Droit & Economie,   LGDJ-Lextenso, 2020.

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No one can know what the Law of the 21st century will be. Pretending to know it is just not to realize its ignorance. Why then writing about it, since the future is always surprising?

One can only write about the unknown part of the Law of tomorrow. If the future is then modeled on what was written, so much the better for the prophet, a tribute that can, for example, be paid to Pierre Godé!footnote-1813 who described in 1999 what was going to be 10 years later "Law of the future" constituted by Environmental Law!footnote-1804. If the future denies the author or if its contours in no way follow the lines of the written word, this is not serious since the writing of the Law, even if it has the specificity of being partly prescriptive in that it has the power to write the future, a normative pen that rounds up letters!footnote-1805, it participates in all writing: above all to be that of a dream.

Lévi-Strauss argued that teaching is defined as dreaming out loud. Teaching and describing the Law of a century that we will never know gives even more freedom to dream about it. This freedom increases when the object is a branch of Law in the process of being born, state of the stammering "Compliance Law" of which some still maintain, as it was made for Regulation Law, that there is not existing. The hand can then, as it pleases, trace its beautiful or hideous features: what face will Compliance Law have, as soon as we assume that it will exist?

It may as well be a nightmare (I) as a happy dream (II).

It is up to us to choose in which category this branch of Law will flourish. Because what we can be sure of is this fulfillment. It is certainly already taking sides to presuppose the very existence of Compliance Law. Not only to consider it possibility with hostility because to be an enemy of something or someone is already to recognize their existence. Before that, two objections radically block the very existence of Compliance Law and their shadow remains in the future of it!footnote-1809.

Firstly, it is said that Compliance does not come under Law, but for example only ethics since it would consist in keeping well in companies which care about the interest of others or the planet, for example by spontaneous care of the environment; Compliance being a crystallization of social responsibility, the one for which we have our conscience, we express our "raison d'être" and we are not accountable!footnote-1807. Or it would consist in technologically putting in place tools for capturing technical information using data storage and processing methods. Compliance is then a sub-category of "Data Regulation"!!footnote-1814, a mechanical concept in which Law is no more present. In these two perspectives, Compliance Law cannot exist, no more tomorrow than it would exist today. These two radical conceptions, completely entrusting Compliance mechanisms to everyone except lawyers, do not make sense because it suffices to note the development of judgments and laws to measure the legal phenomenon already present!footnote-1808.

Second, there would be many Compliance mechanisms but insufficient to constitute a branch of Law. Indeed we would find Compliance in Company Law, Labor Law, Financial Law, Banking Law, Criminal Law, Administrative Law, European Law, International Law, etc.

These classic branches, which have been formed for so long, depending on the point of view adopted, would gain in modernity or be threatened with decay by this kind of extension which will be Compliance. There would thus be as many "little legal sectoral rules" as there are branches of law. These new internal developments would be like a new bud, on which care should be taken - if the tree regains its strength - or a weed to be eradicated - if the French garden loses its perspective.

Thus the matter being scattered as many as specialist lawyers, often criminalists or specialists in banking and Financial Law, then tomorrow all specialists in all branches of Law, this could constitute the most radical obstacle to the constitution of Compliance Law. Indeed, we would come back to confuse Compliance and the "modernization" of Law itself as a whole, since it would only be a question of perfecting each of the classic branches of the legal system.

If we keep in this half-sleep that is any projection in the future the hope of a constituted branch of Law, we must discard these two perspectives of annihilation, either in the total absence of Law or in recovery by all Law. To dismiss the sorrowful spirits who see no future in Compliance and keep only its enemies in the space of this article, let us assume that Compliance Law will exist in the 21st century. In what form and by what means, in the palm of which institutions, in the shadow of which legal system? Since it is a question of projecting ourselves onto the black screen of our nights of dreamy lawyers, let us take the current state only as a trailer. Like the one developed by the genius who by the contempt not only brought down into the flames of hell the cinema which has become a consumer industry with which producers force-feed us but offered us the vision of its future. What is what we see today the trailer? We let our imagination run wild since the trailer films are autonomous works compared to the film which follows them.

We have no idea what will happen and what we are watching from the brief and violent current images of Compliance Law, the cinema of which rather makes a hero of the whistleblower!footnote-1811 and a character of the narrow and ridiculous importance of the compliance officer!footnote-1812, does little to help us. But if we force the features of the present lineaments, the alternative of this Law in childhood is therefore that of a nightmare (I) or an idyllic solution for difficulties that will increase (II).

Everything will depend on the concept that we will retain of Compliance Law. Because the script is not written, because Compliance Law is a Law with a political dimension, that it is defined by the ambitions that we can claim to have by setting monumental goals that we are going to achieve, a claim that will make it one major branch of the Law of tomorrow, or we can abandon any claim, lower our heads and arms, and reject any claim. It is then that the power of Compliance Law, which will be no less great, will turn against us, human beings, as in a nightmare.

Full reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., L'impossible unicité juridique de la catégorie des "lanceurs d'alertes" ("The impossible legal unicity of the category of "whistleblowers""), in Chacornac, J. (dir.), Lanceurs d'alertes, regards comparatistes, ("Whistleblowers, comparative perspectives"), Publications of the Centre français de droit comparé ("French Comparative Law Center"), May 2020, Volume 21, p.13-31. 

Read the article (in French).   

Read the general presentation of the collective book in which this article is published

Read the bilingual working paper which had served of basis for this article. 

Read the presentation of the conference "Les lanceurs d'alertes: glose" (Whistleblowers: glose") and especially the slides elabored for the colloquium organized by the Centre français de droit comparé ("French Comparative Law Center") on 23th of November 2018 under the direction of Jérôme Chacornac

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Introduction of the article

"Whistleblowers". This is a new expression. Which is a great success. Barely heard once, we hear it everywhere ...

A topic not of course or knowledge test, but rather a topic of daily conversation. Because it is spoken to us every day, in more or less gracious terms. For example President Donald Trump on October 1, 2019 declared to the press "want to question" the whistleblower who would have illegally denounced him and would not, according to him, have the right to conceal his identity, proof in this according to him of the lying character of his assertions against him, while his lawyer indicates on October 6, 2019 that he is not speaking on behalf of a single whistleblower thus taken to task but of a plurality of people who gave information against the President of the United States. Even the most imaginative screenwriters would not have written such brutal and rapid twists and turns. Spectators, we are waiting for the next episode, secretly hoping for the escalation.

And precisely if we go to the cinema, it is still a whistleblower whose dedication and success, we are told about, even the drama, for the benefit of global society, and in particular democracy, since the secrets are fought for the benefit of the truth. The Secret Man designates Mark Felt as the first whistleblower. Returning to what we often present as being a more "serious" media!footnote-1391, we listen to France-Culture and here is another story told by a historian who worked as an archivist on events that political power would have liked to keep hidden by possibly destroying their traces but which its trade led to preserve: here it is expressly presented to the studious listeners like a "whistleblower" .... While the same radio tries to find the one who could well be, as in a kind of contest the "first whistleblower"!footnote-1727? .... This rewriting of History can be defended because ultimately what did other Voltaire do for Calas, or Zola for Dreyfus?

It is also a subject of legislative discussion since in the United States the Dodd-Frank law of 2010 inserted in the law of 1934 which established the Securities & Exchanges Commission a complete device of remuneration and remuneration of the whistleblowers, whereas after having developed flexible but guiding lines in this regard in 2012!footnote-1698, the European Commission published on November 20, 2018 the text of what will become a Directive intended to give a unified European status to the character, in the system gradually developed to protect the one who was presented in 2018 as that "cannot be punished for having done what is right".

In Europe, the Directive first approved by a Resolution of the European Parliament on April 16, 2019 on the protection of persons denouncing breaches of Union Law and then adopted on October 7, 2019 (Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council of European Union on the Protection of Persons who Report Violations of European Union Law, different title, it should be noted, will have to be transposed into the laws of the Member States within the next two years. , since only "violations of Union Law" are targeted, but the character of the "whistleblower" is more generally targeted: he is "whole"!footnote-1699.

In short, the whistleblower is a star!footnote-1390. A sort of historical figure, covered in blows and glory, going from Voltaire to Snowden, both of whom find themselves embodied on the screens!footnote-1681 ....,

Consecrated by law, which associates with it a legal regime of protection to such an extent that, like a Nessus tunic, it is this legal regime which will define the character and not the reverse. When we read the law of December 9, 2016 relating to transparency in the fight against corruption and the modernization of economic life, known as "Sapin 2", we notice that the Legislator makes much of this character, since 'he dedicates its chapter II to him!footnote-1682: "From the protection of whistleblowers", and that it is by his very protection that he formally opens the door of Right to him.

But why a plural? Admittedly when we read the recitals of the Community Directive of October 7, 2019 on the protection of whistleblowers!footnote-1702, it is only a list of all the subjects on which it is a good idea to protect them, which therefore prompts us to see in this plural only the index of this non-exhaustive list of subjects which it is good to tell us, a sign of the lack of definition of who should alert us. Reading the French law known as "Sapin 2" makes it less severe but more perplexing. Indeed, this plurality referred to by the title of the chapter devoted to "whistleblowers", there is no longer any question in the rest of the law, in the very definition which follows, article 6 which opens this chapter devoted to "whistleblowers" offering the reader immediately a singular since it begins as follows: "A!footnote-1684 whistleblower is a person ...". No mention of diversity. The art of legislative writing would however have required that the qualifying article not only be singular but that it should not yet be undefined. Stendhal if he had still deigned to have the law for bedside book would have wanted to find at the beginning of chapter a sentence like: "The!footnote-1683 whistleblower is a person ...".

Thus seem to contradict themselves within the law "Sapin 2 the very title which presents the character, in that it uses a defined plural (the) while the defining article which presents it is in the undefined singular (one). ...

Here is a first reason not to advance any more but in a very careful way, in this "step by step" that constitutes a reading word for word: a gloss. This consists of taking the expression itself literally. The second reason for this technical choice is that the gloss is well suited to the introduction of a collective work, thus allowing more targeted developments to take place in other contributions, on the techniques, the difficulties and the limits of this protection, or on its history, or the reasons for the arrival in French law of these whistleblowers and the way they develop, or not, elsewhere.

I am therefore going to content myself with taking this already legal expression to the letter: The (I) whistle (III). blowers (II). 

This working paper is the basis for an article in the French Law Journal Le Clunet.

When we compare the terms "Compliance" and "Extraterritoriality", it is often with dissatisfaction, even anger and indignation. On the momentum, after having expressed a principle of disapproval of such a merger, attention is focused on how we can fight against it, to break the link between Compliance and Extraterritoriality. But do we have to go so fast? Is this negative initial assessment correct?

Indeed, thus gone, it is frequently explained that the binding mechanisms of Compliance are suffered, that they come from abroad!footnote-1750, that they apply with efficiency but in an illegitimate way, without agreement of the one who must submit to it, whose resistance is therefore certainly ineffective but nevertheless justified. In the same spirit, when we start to shell the cases, like so many scars, sort of rosary, even crown of thorns, BNPP case!footnote-1718, Astom case!footnote-1717, etc., the wounds not yet closed turn into reproaches made against the rules, public authorities, even reproaches made against named people.

We are leaving this kind of complaint against X, which targets what would be this appalling "Compliance", this Law which would be both hostile and mechanical which would not have been able to stay within the limits of borders, Compliance being thus placed in contrast to sovereignty and protection, which presuppose staying within its limits!footnote-1716 and being able to protect companies from abroad. More concretely, this presentation targets more directly the United States, which uses "the legal weapon", slipped under what is then designated as "the artifice of the Law" with extraterritorial scope. But this effect would in reality be the very object of the whole: their hegemonic will to better organize at least a global racket, notably through the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and at best a world government through notably the embargoes.Those who believed otherwise would be naive or foolish. This silences the opponents because who likes this costume? So the world would be put in a ruled cut; what the mafia could not have done, Compliance Law would have obtained, offering the whole world to the United States thanks to the extraterritoriality of its national Law.

Compliance Law would thus become the very negation of Law, since it has the effect, even the purpose (barely concealed by strategic, powerful and shameless States), of counting borders for nothing, whereas Public International Law, in that it is built between the sovereign subjects of law that are the States presupposes the primary respect for borders to better exceed them while Private International Law takes the same postulate to better welcome foreign Law in situations presenting a foreign element!footnote-1726. Jurists believed in the force of Law; by Compliance, we would return to the sad reality that only the powerful, here the United States, dominate and - ironically - it is under the pretext of Law that they do it. It would be necessary to be well duped, or accomplice, to see there still legal where there is only the balance of powers. When one is more intelligent or skilful than that, one understands that the "small" can only be "subject" to the Compliance Law, one would have to be powerful to be the normative source and its enforcement agent. It is then towards this mis-named Department of Justice (DoJ) that the fearful, hateful and resigned glances turn. 

If you see it that way, what should you do then? The answer is obvious: react!

It is necessary to save the sovereignty, France, companies, the Law itself. If that is how the question is posed, how can we disagree? It is therefore necessary to destroy the Compliance Law and the extra-territoriality of American Law which had found this "Trojan horse", an expression so frequently used. This is the basis for the administrative reports available, for example the Berger-Lellouche!footnote-1719 parliamentary reports and the Gauvainfootnote-1720 report. Both of them broadly develop the two preceding claims, namely that the extra-priority of compliance mechanisms is illegitimate and harmful, since it is a mechanism invented by the Americans and harming the Europeans, or even invented by the Americans to harm Europeans, the description being made in much more violent terms than those used here. The description seems acquired, the reflections therefore relate to the remedies. The reaction is most often to "block" the Compliance Law in its extraterritorial effect.

But without discussing the effectiveness of the remedies proposed downstream, it is necessary to return to this description so widely shared made upstream. Because many elements on the contrary lead to affirm that ComplianceLaw first of all and by nature can only be extraterritorial and that it must be. Whether or not the State in which it was created has malicious intentions. The description which is made to us most often describes particular cases from which we draw generalities, but we cannot reduce Compliance Law to the already cooled cases, as BNPP case, or to the always hot case of the American embargo on Iran. Furthermore, one cannot take the issue of embargoes and draw conclusions, legitimate for it, but which would apply to the whole of Compliance Law. The fact that theCompliance Law is a branch of Law at the stage still of emergence can lead to this confusion which consists in taking the part for the whole, but it is very regrettable because what is justified for the embargoes does not is in no way relevant for all Compliance Law, of which precisely the Law of embargoes is only a small part, even an abusive use. This overlapping is not often perceived, because the definition of Compliance Law and its criterion are not clearly enough defined, namely the existence of a "monumental goal"!footnote-1725, which does not exist in an embargo decided unilaterally by an order decreed by the President of the United States, but which exists in all other cases and fully justifies extraterritoriality, extraterritoriality which is even consubstantial with Compliance Law (I).

Once we have distinguished the embargoes, as an atypical, sometimes even illegitimate part, of Compliance Law, we should continue this work of distinction by emphasizing that the United States has certainly invented Compliance Law!footnote-1721 but only developed a mechanical concept for the prevention and management of systemic risks. Europe has taken up this systemic conception of the protection of systems, for example financial or banking, but superimposed another conception, drawing on its deep humanist tradition!footnote-1722, whose protection of personal data is only an example and whose monumental goal is the protection of the human being. This primary concern then justifies the European use of Compliance mechanisms to interfere with global objects regardless of their location, especially the environment, and to block the entry onto the ground of objects that enter, which is contrary to Competition Law but builds a legitimate barrier under this Compliance Law, in the indifference of an extraterritorial origin (II).

Indeed, this branch of the new Law which is Compliance Law is not reducible to Competition Law!footnote-1723, any more than it is not reducible to a method. It is a substantial, extraterritorial Law because the "monumental goals" which give it substantial unity are extraterritorial. This can directly contribute to the future of a Europe which on the one hand will be able to pursue, in an extraterritorial manner, monumental humanist goals, in the field of the environment or the protection of personal information or access to the Law (in particular by the technique of compliance programs) and which, on the other hand, by the techniques of traceability of products!footnote-1724, will have the means not to bring in products manufactured in an indecent manner, except in countries which do not grant value than in Competition Law to enter the WTO.

Read the developments below.

This working paper served as a basis for a conference done in French for the Centre de droit comparé (Center for Comparative Law) in Paris on 23 November 2018.

Updated, it has served as a basis for an article published in French in a book of the Société de Législation comparé (Society of Comparative Legislation).

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"The whistleblowers". This is a new expression. Which wins a full success. Barely heard once, we hear it everywhere ...

A theme not only of academic teaching, but rather a topic of daily conversation. Because it is every day that we speak about it, in terms more or less graceful. For example President Donald Trump on October 1, 2019 told the press he "wants to interrogate" the whistleblower who would have unlawfully denounced him and would not have, according to him, the right to conceal his own identity, evidence in this according Donald Trump of the false character of his assertions against him, while his lawyer indicates on October 6, 2019 that he does not speak on behalf of a single whistleblower thus taken apart but of a plurality people who gave information against the President of the United States. Even the most imaginative scriptwriters would not have written twists as abruptly or so fast. Spectators, we wait for the next episode, secretly hoping for climbs and slashs.

Precisely if we go to the cinema, it is still a whistleblower whose dedication and success, or even drama, we are told, for the benefit of the global society, and especially of Democracy, since the secrets are fought for the benefit of the truth. Thus, the movie The Secret Man designates Mark Felt as the first whistleblower. Returning to what is often presented as a more "serious" media, for example in France the radio "France Culture" we can learn the story of a historian who worked as an archivist on events that the political power would have wanted to keep hidden by possibly destroying their traces but that his profession led to preserve!footnote-1391: here it is expressly presented to the studious listeners as a "whistleblower" ... While the same radio is trying to find the one that could be, as in a kind of contest, the "first whistleblowers"!footnote-1727?. This rewriting of History can be made because finally Voltaire for Calas, or Zola for Dreyfus did they anything else? 

It is also a topic of legislative debate since in the United States the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 inserted in the 1934 law that established the Securities & Exchanges Commission (SEC) a complete system for retribution and remuneration of whistleblowers, while after elaborating guidelines about about in 2012!footnote-1698, the European Commission has published the text on November 20, 2018 in order to give the character a unified European status, in the device gradually developed to protect the one that was presented in 2018 as who  like that : ""The new whistleblowers' protection rules will be a game changer. In the globalised world where the temptation to maximise profit sometimes at the expense of the law is real we need to support people who are ready to take the risk to uncover serious violations of EU law. We owe it to the honest people of Europe.". Step for the Directive of October 7, 2019. 

In Europe, the Directive first approved by a Resolution of the European Parliament on 16 April 2019 on protection of persons reporting breaches of Union law and then adopted on 7 October 2019 (Directive 2019/78 (EU) of the European Parliament European Union and the Council of the European Union on the Protection of Persons Reporting Breaches of Union law, will have to be transposed in the next two years to the legal systems of the Member States. is not general, since only "violations of European Union Law" are targeted but the character of the "whistleblower" is more generally referred to: it is "whole"!footnote-1699.

In short, the whistleblower is a star !footnote-1390. A kind of historical character, covered with blows and glory, going from Voltaire to Snowden, one as the other being incarnated on the screens!footnote-1681 ....

Recognized by national legislations, which associate to him a legal regime of protection to such a point that, like a tunic of Nessus, it is this legal regime which will define his character and not the opposite. When we read the French law of December 9, 2016 relative à la transparence à la lutte contre la corruption et à la modernisation de la vie économique (on transparency in the fight against corruption and the modernization of economic life), usually known as "Sapin 2 Act", we note that the lawmaker makes much of this character, because he devotes to him the chapter II: "De la protection des!footnote-1682 lanceurs d'alerte" ("The protection of!footnote-1682 whistle-blowers") and that it is by his very protection that the French Parliament formally opens the door of Law to him and throws it openly.

But why a plural? Certainly when we read the recitals of the European Directive of 7 October 2019 on the protection of whistleblowers!footnote-1702, this is only an enumeration of all the subjects about which it is a good idea to to protect them, which encourages us to see in this plural only the index of this non-exhaustive list of topics about which it is good that we are alerted, sign of the lack of definition ... Reading the French law known as "Sapin 2" makes us less severe but more perplex. Indeed, from this plurality covered by the title of the chapter devoted to Les lanceurs d'alerte ("The whistleblowers"), there is no longer any question in the rest of the law, in the very definition that follows, Article 6 which opens this chapter devoted the "whistleblowers" offering the player immediately a singular since it begins as follows:  "Un!footnote-1684 lanceur d'alerte est une personne ..." (A! footnote-1684 whistleblower is a person ..."). No more mention of diversity. The art of legislative writing would have even required that the qualifying article should not be singular but not yet indefinite. 

Thus seem to contradict in this law "Sapin 2" itself the very title which presents the character, in that it uses a definite plural ("the whistleblowers") while the article of definition which presents the topic does it by using the singular indefinite : "a whistleblower....".

This is a first reason to move forward only in a very cautious way, in this "step by step" that constitutes a word-by-word reading: a gloss. This method consists in taking literally the expression itself. The second reason for this technical choice is that the gloss is well suited to an introduction of a collective work, allowing more specific developments to take place in other contributions, for example on the techniques, the difficulties and the limits of this protection, or the history of it, or the reasons for the arrival in French law of these American or Brithish whistleblowers and the way they develop, or not, in other legal systems or other countries.

I will therefore content myself with taking again literally this already legal expression: The (I) launchers (II) of alert (III).

See below developments.

This working document is the basis for an article published in the Archives of Philosophy of Law (APD).

Summary: Painting so well that the canvas is a living object is a technical feat that was achieved by little!footnote-1680. Francis Bacon obtained from the canvas that it made it his business to preserve life in it, while Carbonnier, with a similar modesty before the canvas and the profession, obtained that the Law was only a framework, but that it did not however, leave this place to no one and especially not to public opinion, so that everyone can in their own way and within this framework make their own right, on which the legislator in his delicacy and to use the terms of the Dean n affixes only a "thin varnish". These two masters of art built frames with rudimentary principles so that on this canvas the movement could happen by itself. Thus the Legislator created by Carbonnier offered each family the freedom to weave their rights every day. However, the childhood of the art of stretching the canvas over the loom came back to the Legislator alone. It is then possible, as Bacon did, to obtain an immobile object which allows the mobile figures to constantly arise. Regulatory scribbles are a thousand miles from this Legislative Art.

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In numerous writings and interviews, The painter Francis Bacon explains his act as a painter: it is "preserving the vitality of the canvas". In the book he devoted to it, Gilles Deleuze pointed out that Bacon said that "the procedures used do not force the Figure to stand still"!footnote-1611.

With the same pedagogical friendliness, in numerous writings and interviews, the jurist Carbonnier explains his act as a legislator, in particular in his collection of texts Essais sur les lois: legislate well, and let life unfold through texts, well after their adoption, because posed on pages which are never white, written compositions which are only the "varnish" of the life which must be able to throb in these Laws which one presents however so often but so strangely as "engraved in marble ". While on the contrary it is only a question of "preserving" the vitality of what is under the letter of the Law, the life of each one, life which does not resemble that of the neighbor, to obtain that the web of the legislative system is so flexible that this system lives by itself after the promulgation of the texts.

But it may seem to force the line to find elements common to two characters who undoubtedly were unaware of their reciprocal existence or at least, although living at the same time, did not appear similar. Before showing how similar their action is, therefore, put them face to face beforehand.

PREREQUISITES REQUIRED: FACING FRANCIS BACON AND JEAN CARBONNIER

Thus, the family painted in broad outlines by a few new articles of the Civil Code written by Carbonnier could nevertheless flourish afterwards, in each family, without the need to rewrite the text. One might be surprised that Carbonnier expressly only likes the Law and not the judiciary, this association of the Right to the Law often being worth rigidity; yet - and the formula made him famous - he conceived of the Law as only "flexible", without recognizing the judge as a general source of the Law, without recognizing him the power to soften over time the edge of the adapted law formerly, then once. In fact, the Flexible Droit volume brings together almost only texts relating to laws, while in his latest work, Droit et passion du Droit sous la Vième République, he challenges the influence of the courts over the Law.

Carbonnier abides by the Law. These laws which we are constantly told us that their quality should be never to move .... And to evoke in order to convince us the imperative of legal certainty, predictability, etc., each new report on the subject saying the same thing as the previous one, this one serving as a reference for the next one.

Thus, all these numerous works explain to us that, in the ideal towards which one should tend, the Law does not move in the main lines while the judge, by "jurisprudence" comes to adapt it and that thanks to "dialogue ", even to the" dialectic "between legislation and jurisprudence", cahin-caha we arrive at something suitable. In practice. And here is legal security well served, since it would be the only concern. A universal model to apply everywhere , at everything.

But this presentation, now very common and also constituting the vulgate of the economic analysis of law, does not correspond to the conception of Carbonnier, who did not admit the creative power of the Judge, being, like Motulsky, above all a jurist . Because if he asked as a question "Any law in itself is an evil?", It is only to answer it firmly: No, going so far as to compare in this article the announcement of a new law with the announcement made by the angel Gabriel.

Perhaps it is his attachment to the Law, his refusal to consider the jurisprudence as the source of the law, his respect for the legal matter itself that make his work today less cited than the work of sociologists who do not know not more the legal technique than the economists who describe the "legal regulation" to adopt to be effective? It should also be noted that its legislative art is little used today!footnote-1606. When laws are written by experts who do not deem it useful to know the law (for example to reform collective procedures solely on the basis of economic knowledge), who even think it useful to not know it so as not to be captured by his technicality, there is no need to look on the side of Carbonnier.

 It is true that to make a painting, to have the strength to fade in front of your canvas, you must master the technicality to return to the childhood of art, ambition of all artists, all teachers, all the Masters. Francis Bacon, also a wise reader of writers, rejecting the modern opposition between painted lines and written texts, repeated at each interview that he awaits "the accident" which comes alone to get the flesh out of the skin that traps him!footnote-1659. This technicality of the accident, this unexpected preparedness that allows life to find its place in the stretched canvas. Carbonnier did not do anything else: stretch the canvas of the Law so that family life can, in each of the families we make up, unfold overflowing with the text which is only "varnished". But it is nevertheless a law, as Bacon never disputed making paintings.

The theme of Carbonnier Sociologie juridique's book is this necessary presence of law in a sociological analysis which would not betray the law presented while managing to keep its distance: that is to say, let it breathe, allowing us to watch live. This is why, like Truffaut, he took an interest in children's pocket money.

By a game of mirrors, Carbonnier explained, for example about the reform he conceived of the Law of matrimonial regimes and whose genesis he explained in an article in L'Année sociologique!footnote-1619, that the sociology of law must allow distant readers that we are faced with the only written sheet of the work to see the living law come out of the pages. As historians aspire, History being living matter, as the author of literature understands it. Carbonnier wrote a novel about himself. A novel about a legislator therefore. "Self-fiction". We know judges of absolute modernity who have brought this art to its excellence, similarly concerned with writing life.

Admittedly, one could underline that if Francis Bacon signed his tables, which attaches to him the work and holds the Figure which moves there, it was not the case for Carbonnier. You must already be a scholar to know that the author of the train of reforms of the XXth century which transformed the Civil Code has for patronym "Jean Carbonnier": the Legislator is an abstract character, who, like the State, always carries this same title , like the King, and passes indifferently from head to head, from the dead instant to the crowned instant. Whoever looks at the painting will attribute it to Francis Bacon because it is written on it, while on the contrary he will designate for example the law of July 15, 1975 as the law reforming the law of divorce, without referring to the human being who designed it. Yes, it is the Parliament, which, in the name of the People via the Representation, is the author of the Laws. And not such and such.

So the comparison would not be worth. But let's take a detour by Romain Gary. The action of this one showed what one could call "the right of the literature", ie what can go the power of this one. Its power is so great that the author can never appear in it!footnote-1614. Romain Gary not only wrote under pseudonym, which allowed him to pass under the radar of the legal standard of Gongourt which cannot be given twice - and which was it, but wrote himself a book supposedly written by his ghostwriter after the hoax discovered - and therefore supposedly finished, speaking ill of Romain Gary, against which he protested but nevertheless undertook legally not to complain in court. While he himself wrote the book. The author can be a ghost, which multiplies, ghost of the ghost, is discovered only to hide under his face that is believed to be discovered, etc. But by dint of covering the smoke with smoke, the author himself disappears: and then remains the pure work, the Figure which moves alone, perfectly free. Thus under the mask of the Legislator, it was Carbonnier who designed and wrote, without ever signing, because it is the Law who speaks, and never Carbonnier. No greater tribute a law clerk can pay to the Law than disappearing under his letter. Thus, an author does not recognize his signature, it is only a clue, not a condition.

There is no need to go to Law & Literrature, a current which dries up the Law rather to cover it with a conception of the Law as a fabric of strategic lies and retrospective narratives of justification of decisions. No, Carbonnier, far too erudite and far too good a jurist to go towards a thought above all critical of an object, made sociology to show us a living Law and at the same time had a sociological conception of Legislative Art , writing laws which capture in their austere lines the daily and various lives which will come after the writing of a law which writes only in capital letters, general, aiming nothing special so that the particular remains in the hands of each individual!footnote-1607.

But how, if we get the judge out of the normative game, can the law be "flexible"? If not by drawing up laws which "preserve" in themselves, in their "canvas" even their vitality, which allows them to move, in an ink which must never be dry or reach marble?

Why not make the connection between the two creators, Francis Bacon and Jean Carbonnier?

How even not to do it, the design and the method are so similar to them.

When Bacon paints scenes of daily life as a field of ruin, while Carbonnier aims only "the interest of the child", on which one glosses so much, only as "a key which opens on a vacant lot"!footnote-1608, how not to bring them together?

For the two authors, painting for one and the law for the other, both must tear them away from their static support so that there is expressed and "preserves" life in its mobility itself. Even more, it is thanks to this support, which we thought motionless, that the fluidity of life appears to us. Thus life is, for them, the common object of painting and the law. This definition is carried by few people, because we find so often in the presentations which are made of the Law the imperative of a choice to operate, to put on the side of the immobile or on the side of the mobile, but not this conception of mobility expressed by an immobile support (I). It must be recognized that few have the level of technical mastery and thinking of Bacon and Carbonnier.

But if we go back to Carbonnier's conception of the law, while at a distance, as would do, in his own words, in his own country a "foreign" legislator!footnote-1603 in relation to it, laws that 'he nevertheless made with a master's hand, was it not in terms of painter that he described it, evoking the "frame" that it constitutes and the "thin varnish" by which it must simply always cover life which always prevails, since it is the canvas? (II).

The two authors thus put life at the center, one of the tables, the other of the laws. Yet two motionless objects, some made of "canvas", others made of "marble".

But both wanted - emphasizing the difficulty of the task - forcibly reinserted into the materially intrinsic immobility of the object - the canvas of the table that the flaking of the paint by the passage of time will damage , the letter of the Law that subsequent reforms will challenge - life. That is to say, finally give them their true object. And yet impossible to restore. And they got there. Undoubtedly by their own qualities: mastered technicality, modesty, perseverance, effacement before life itself which unfolds and occupies all the space and "does its work" on the support, which becomes mobile. Thus Francis Bacon's paintings move as the laws written by Carbonnier live, which is natural since it was directly inserted. What modesty was it worth to fade to this point.

Achieve by technical prowess that life is still throbbing in the canvas, in the text published in the Official Journal. Only in what by nature is fixed: the canvas, the Law, not only does life still throb, as if by "inadvertence", as Francis Bacon says, because life has a hard life, but because the masters that they were so delicate and so masters of their Art that they made everything that it was the very object of their work: the canvas of the picture was for Francis Bacon what life was made of, the marble of the law was for Carbonnier that by law life was made.

So as when the Master of Sewing removes the thread, the canvas no longer exists, the diary has long been lost, but life is still there. This is no coincidence, as sociologists who seem to boast of knowing nothing about law seem to present, speak of a "legislative vacuum" and always ask for more "new laws", sometimes stressing that Carbonnier was also arbitrary in law that bad in sociology - because there is to say it.

On the contrary, it is the Law bringing to its perfection: practical art, the Law relates to life and if in advance, in its very conception, it knows how to fade in front of life, it then joins in practice the art of painting because it takes a painter to force life on canvas (I). This requires a painter, because we often talk about legislative art but it is also appropriate to talk about artists who hold the pen. These do not "regulate", they draw a picture which, through the effect of correspondence, can let life continue to unfold because the ink is never dry. Of this table, it is the law which forms the framework, a light framework which allows to keep contours to what is the Right and what is not. Carbonnier always knew that in relation to life, Law was only a "thin varnish". Like all great masters, it was modest, drawing up great pictures, that were the complete reforms of the Civil Code that he wrote, never forgetting to conceive them only as a varnish so that life always finds its way out, breathe, in the same movement of a woman coming down the stairs or of a Pope who rules on his throne (II).

Summary : In August 2019, about the fire devastating the Amazon, the French Minister of Ecology says that this fact "is not just the business of a state" (n'est pas que l'affaire d'un Etat). This assertion denies the postulates of Public International Iaw (I). This supposes a new system, based on the idea that the power of the State on its territory is erased when the object that is there is no longer related to this "part" but to the All that is Universe (II). Let's accept the augur. First question: if it is not only the case of a State, whose business is it? (III). Second question: to anticipate the other cases that fall under this regime, what should be the criteria in the name of which the All will have to prevail over the part and who will then take care of the case of which the "local" State is divested? (IV). Because the perspective goes beyond the environment, beyond Brazil, beyond the States. It leads to Compliance Law animated by "monumental goals" that are the concern for the Universe and humans, in a humanist spirit. Let's go.

___

On August 27, 2019, on the French radio France Inter, Elisabeth Borne, French Minister of Ecology (Transition écologique) expresses it clearly:  "Quand on est sur un enjeu tel que l'Amazonie, ça n'est pas que l'affaire d'un État", that can be translated : "When we are on a stake such as the Amazon, it is not only the business of one State ".

Starting from one case, "the Amazon", the Minister, thus taking up the position of the French President, associates a general consequence: "it is not only the affair of one State".

This is not a trivial sentence.

This affirmation denies, and why not, the entire system of Public International Law (I). By a new reasoning based on the idea that the All prevails, as by an effect of nature, on the Part (II).

Admitting this, it leads to opening two sets of questions. The first is related to the following main question: if it is not only the case of one State, of which is this the concern (III)? The second set of questions revolves around the questioning of the criteria on behalf of which other cases must be seized in the name of "All " and how to do it (IV).

A. The postulate of Public (and Private) International Law: parties (States) which, because of common interests, are in contact

The notion of State includes in its very definition the notion of territory (a territory, a population, institutions).

Thus the State governs through its institutions what is happening on its territory. For example, if there is a fire, or a risk of fire, the State makes arrangements through all legal, financial, technical and human instruments available to it. It is accountable for what it does through its political and legal responsibility.

When what is happening on its territory exceeds this one, in fact (epidemic, catastrophe with the consequences exceeding the borders, migrations, etc.) either according to its own opinion or according to that of the other States, the States, being sovereign subjects of Law in  the international system, act together on a pre-built legal basis: bilateral or/and multilateral treaties!footnote-1675, having created legal integrated zones (like the European Union or the United States) or international institutions (like the IMF).

A particular technique has been developed for several millennia - but here again the seniority is not sufficient to keep the system: diplomacy, anchored in each state in a particular ministry: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which each national government has. If one State totally excludes one phenomenon in the territory of another, the progressive procedure of ceasing diplomatic ties begins.

This can result in wars.

In the "case of the Amazon" both the President of Brazil and the President of the United States stick to the classical construction of Law.

Indeed, the former asserted that the Amazon is in the territory of Brazil, thus falls under the jurisdiction of the power of the Brazilian State and the Brazilian Law, from which it follows that another State does not have to come to interfere. However, the French President takes the floor not as this forest extends also on a French territory but as it is the business of the World. On the contrary, the President of Brazil claims the closing effect, which excludes a third State from taking over directly something - even a difficulty - that takes place in the territory of another.

The President of the US federal State has said that these are joint decisions between the President of Brazil and other heads of State, sovereign subjects of Law, who must agree to organize a solution to solve a local problem . Because in the same way that States can declare war, they can help each other!footnote-1676.

The whole Public (and Private) International Law is therefore based on this assumption: "parts" of the world, on which sovereign parties (States) have taken contact, because circumstances make something that falls within one of them or several others.

This is precisely what is called into question. The notion of the "right of interference", whose evocation we hardly hear any more, had already done so. But on another basis.

B. The "right of interference": idea that somebody can directly interfere with what happens in a country , an idea that does not question the postulate of the International Maw, an idea that rests on something else: a " right for the other "

The "right of interference" is the idea that in certain territories, things happen that are inadmissible.

In memory of the jus cogens, a kind of "Natural Law" of Public International Law, Another, that could be another state, can come to meddle with what is happening in a territory that is closed, without declaring war. to the state that keeps its borders.

It is the need of others, for example those who die in mass on this territory, or the nature that is devastated in the indifference of the State on whose soil the disaster is happening, which founds this "right" of another state to come and take charge.

The foundation of this "right" is therefore a "duty".

C. The new idea: a territory is only part of the Globe, whose fate is everyone's concern

The idea is new because it is not based on altruism. And no more about self-interest. Yet, de facto and de jure , the Amazon is not on the sole territory of Brazil.

France is particularly well placed to say something about it since part of the Amazon is on French territory.

Thus the inaction of the main concerned Brazil directly affects the interest of France, a "forest" being a block that can not be divided. If we were in Property Law, we would say that we are in indivision with Brazil and that in this respect, with the other States on whose territories this forest extends, a solution must be found.

Because of the indivisibility of this particular object which is this particular fores!footnote-1644, it is necessary that the States whose territory is concerned have a say in the matter.

But this is not the argument put forward by France, particularly by the President of the Republic.

It is said that the whole world is concerned about the fate of the Amazon. It could be said that, in this respect, when what could be described as a "global forest" is well treated, its management does indeed fall within the power of Brazil, Brazilian companies and the Brazilian State, but when it is abused to the point of seeing its future compromised, when fires may make it disappear, then this forest appears not to be localized in Brazil but being located in the World, of which Brazil is only a part!footnote-1648.

This reasoning, which then gives voice to everyone, for in the world every state is included in it, is a new reasoning.

The economic-political theory of the "commons" does not account for it because it is not a very legal theory!footnote-1656. 

II. THE NEW REASONING THAT COVERS THE CLASSIC REASONING OF PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW

The new reasoning adopted by the Minister consists in saying that the Amazon does not concern only Brazil. This forest should therefore be directly related to the World (A). This is a welcome change in the system but based on a paradox (B).

A. When the Amazon is in danger of death, then it should no longer be attached to this part of the World that is Brazil, but directly to the World

This forest is presented as the "lung" of the planet, it is the "future" of humanity. In this, it can concern only one State, not even the one on whose territory this "Humanity good" is located!footnote-1643. 

As such, without the need to declare war to Brazil, another State may speak, for example the French State through the one that represents it in the international order, that is to say its President, to say what to do, since according to him the President of Brazil does not say or do what it is absolutely necessary to do for the whole planet and for the future of Humanity.

This induces a complete renewal of international institutions.

Indeed a direct attachment to the World and no longer to Brazil gives the forest object a special status because of a goal that exceeds Brazil: save the Amazon would impose because it would save the world. Therefore, it can no longer be the subject of Brazil, which would be like "dispossessed" by a goal that is imposed on it: to save the Amazon rainforest, even though it is mainly on its territory, while other States become legitimate to dispose of this object, even if the forest would not be in part in their territory, even if they would not be affected in their own interests.

This contradicts all Public International Law!footnote-1645; because the agreement of the political representatives of Brazil is no longer required and no one yet evokes the need to declare war to Brazil, and fortunately!

Such an upheaval justifies that such an affirmation is accepted with difficulty. One understands better than first consequence, which is not so innocuous, one of the first rules of diplomacy which is the politeness, between the heads of state, with regard to the spouses of these , have be broken!footnote-1657, that the remarks have slipped on personal questions, etc.

B. A welcome but paradoxical change in the system

Why not change the system?

This is difficult to admit, not only because it is brutal, but because it is paradoxical.

The paradox is the following. It is recognized that the theme of the disappearance of borders by "globalization"!footnote-1647 no longer reproduces the reality of facts!footnote-1646, especially not the Chinese situation, the digitalization having on the contrary allowed the construction of even stronger boundaries. What we called "globalization" now belongs to the pastWhat we called "globalization" now belongs to the past!footnote-1660. So today we should recognize on one side the reality of borders - which had not disappeared or are reborn - but only to better step over them, since - based on the concern of the world - states, yet each in their borders, would be legitimate to go directly to intervene in the business of others. 

The paradox is therefore, on the one hand, the rejection of the allegation of a de facto disappearance of borders by an economic interdependence, technology having denied "globalization" as a fact !footnote-1649 and the linked resurgence of borders allowing States to affirm more than ever that they would be "sovereign masters at home", which should logically lead to let Brazil decide for the Amazon, while yet on the other side we witness the questioning of the postulate of Public International Law as recognition of sovereignty and construction from agreements between states, requiring the agreement of the state whose territory is concerned (except war), questioning which leads to allow all to meddle with the fate of the Amazon, as if there was no border.

This paradox leads to two questions.

The first question is: if "it's not juste one State affair", who's concerned?

The second question is: after the "case of the Amazon", what are the other cases? And how are we going to provide solutions, if we no longer have the solutions of Public International Law, that is to say, the agreement of the country whose territory is concerned and which we do not want not go to war?

If we have clear ideas on the answers to be given to these two sets of questions, then because indeed when the future of all is in progress it can not be the affair of a single State, it is necessary to question Public International Law. But do we have clear ideas on these two questions? And what are the possibilities for possible solutions?

See the text following below.

►  Complete reference : Frison-Roche, M.-A., Having a good behavior in the digital space, working paper, April 2019.

____

📝  This working document serves as a basis for a contribution to the collective book dedicated to Professor Michel Vivant, article written en French.

Summary: The jurist sees the world through the way he learns to speak!footnote-1536, legal vocabulary build by Law itself, whether in common law or in civil law. Thus, we think we are dealing with the human being who does not move, taken by the legal notion expressed by the term "person", their body and their biological development in time, from the birth to the death, holding entirely in this hollow of that word "person", while the behavior of the human being with regard to the world, others and things, are grouped in other branches of Law: the Contract and Tort Law and the Property Law, which are only what people do with and about things.

The Law of the Environment has already come to blur this distinction, so finally so strange because this classical conception refers to a person taken firstly in his immobility (Law of individuals), and then in his only actions (Contrats and Tort Law, Property Law). Indeed, the very notion of "environment" implies that the person is not isolated, that he/she is "surrounded", that he/she is what he/she is and will become because of what surrounds him/her ; in return the world is permanently affected by his/her personal action. On second thought, when once "Law of Individuals" was not distinguished from Family Law, the human being was more fully restored by this division in the legal system that not only followed him/her from birth to death but also in him/her most valuable interactions: parents, siblings, couples, children. Thus Family Law was finer and more faithful to what is the life of a human being.

To have instituted Law of Individuals, it is thus to have promoted of the human being a vision certainly more concrete, because it is above all of their identity and their body about what Law speaks, astonishing that we have not noticed before that women are not men like the others. To have instituted the Law of the people, it is thus to have promoted of the human being a vision certainly more concrete, because it is above all of his identity and his body that one speaks to us, astonishing that the we have not noticed before that women are not men like the others!footnote-1537 without however remembering that abstraction is sometimes the best of protections!footnote-1538.  But it is also to have isolated human beings, split from what they do, what they touch, what they say to others. It is by taking legally a static perception of a "man without relationship". We have gone from the legal individualism of the Law of the sole man.

From this concrete vision, we have all the benefits but Law, much more than in the eighteenth century, perceives the human being as an isolated subject, whose corporeality ceases to be veiled by Law!footnote-1570, but for whom the relation to others or to things does not define him or her. Which brings the human being a lot closer to things. An human being who is a legal subject who does what they wants, as they can, limited by the force of things. But in fact things are so powerful and the human being, in fact, so weak. For example, the marks people leave are erased by time. Their grip on the world stops at the extent of their knowledge, the time and money they have, building to use better their own time and to reach projects that they designed, In this conception, Person and Liberty are one, returning the subject to their solitude.

This freedom will come into conflict with the need for order, expressed by society, social contract, state, law, which imposes limits on freedom of one to preserve freedom of the other, as recalled by the French Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme  of 1789. Thus, it is not possible de jure to transform every desire in action,, even though the means would be within reach of the person in question, because certain behaviors are prohibited in that they would cause too much disorder and if they are nevertheless committed, they are punished for order to return. Thus, what could be called "law of behavior", obligations to do and not to be put in criminal, civil and administrative Law, national and international Law, substantial Law and procedural Law :they will protect the human being in movment pushed by the principle of freedom forward others and thing, movement inherent in their status as a Person. 

The human being is therefore limited in what they want to do. In the first place by the fact: their exhausting forces, their death that will come, the time counted, the money that is lacking, the knowledge that they does not even know not holding, all that is to say by their very humanity; Secondly, by the Law which forbids so many actions ...: not to kill, not to steal, not to take the spouse of others, not to pass as true what is false, etc. For the human being on the move, full of life and projects, Law has always had a "rabat-joy" side. It is for that reason often ridiculous and criticized because of all its restraining regulations, even hated or feared in that it would prevent to live according to our desire, which is always my "good pleasure", good since it is mine. Isolated and all-powerful, the human being alone not wanting to consider other than its desire alone.

Psychoanalysis, however, has shown that Law, in that it sets limits, assigns to the human being a place and a way of being held with respect to things and other persons. If one no longer stands themselves by the prohibition of the satisfaction of all desire (the first of which is the death of the other), social life is no longer possible!footnote-1571. Thank to the Law, everyone follows the same Rule at the table, from which a discussion can take place between guests and without which it can not!footnote-1539. You stand straight in your chair, you do not eat with your fingers, you do not speak with your mouth full, you do not interrupt the speaker. Admittedly, one often learns at the beginning of the learning of the Law that one should not confuse "politeness" and Law. That these rules are politeness and that this is not Law ...

But this presentation aims to make it possible to admit that the criterion of Law would be in the effectiveness of a sanction by the public power: the fine, the prison, the confiscation of a good, which the rudeness does not trigger whereas Law would imply it: by this way we are thus persuaded of the intimacy between the public power (the State) and Law... But later, after this first lesson learned, the doubt comes from the consubstansuality between Law and State. Is it not rather appropriate to consider that Law is what must lead everyone to "behave well" with regard to things and people around them? The question of punishment is important, but it is second, it is not the very definition of Law. The French author Carbonnier pointed out that the gendarme's "kepi" is the "Law sign", that is to say what it is recognized without hesitation, but it is not its definition.

The first issue dealt with by Law is then not so much the freedom of the person as the presence of others. How to use one's freedom and the associated deployment of forces in the presence of others? How could I not using it when I would like to harm them, or if the nuisance created for them by the use of my free strength is indifferent to me!footnote-1540 How can Law lead me to use my means for their benefit while our interests do not converge? 

We do not use our force against others because we have interest or desire, we do not give him the support of our strength while he indifferent us, because Law holds us. If the superego was not enough. If Law and the "parental function of the States" did not make alliance. We do it because we hold ourselves

Or rather we were holding ourselves.

Because today a new world has appeared: the digital world that allows everyone not to "hold" himself, that is to say to constantly abuse others, never to take them into consideration, to attack massively. It's a new experience. It is not a pathological phenomenon, as is delinquency (which simply leads to punishment), nor a structural failure in a principle otherwise admitted (which leads to regulatory remedies) but rather a new use, which would be a new rule: in the digital space, one can do anything to everyone, one is not held by anything or anyone, one can "let go" (I). This lack of "good behavior" is incompatible with the idea of ​​Law, in that Law is made for human beings and protect those who can not afford to protect themselves; that is why this general situation must be remedied  (II).

Full reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., Creating "Regulation Law" at Dauphine, in Huault, I. and Bouchard, B. (ed.), 50 years of Research in Dauphine. 1968-2019, 2019, pp. 110-114

Read Marie-Anne Frison-Roche's article (in French)

Read also: 

The foreword of the book written by Bruno Bouchard (in French)

The preface of the book written by Ivar Ekeland (in French)

The table of contents of the book (in French)