Publications [777]

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. 

This working document is the basis of an article written in French and published in the Recueil Dalloz in the Chroniques MAFR Droit de la Compliance (see the English presentation of this Chronique).

Read the presentation in English ot the other chroniques published by the Recueil Dalloz in these series Chroniques MAFR Droit de la Compliance

This working document served as the basis for an article, contribution in the collective book Compliance Tools, 2020

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Summary of this working paper:

Training is a specific Compliance tool and a dimension that each Compliance tool expresses. 

Firstly, as a training it is a specific Compliance Tool, it is supervised by Regulators. It even becomes compulsory when it is contained in Compliance programs. Since the effectivity and the efficiency are legal requirements, what is therefore the margin of companies to design it and how can we measure its result?

Secondly, as each Compliance Tool contains, more and more, an educational dimension, we can take back each of them to detect this perspective. Thus, even sanctions and prescriptions, are lessons: lessons given, lessons to follow. The question is then to know who, in this so pedagogic Compliance Law, are the "instructors"?

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Introduction:

Training is akin to these things - and very precious - that we do, or even dream of doing, but so poorly expressed from the moment we take them as an object of technical writing. Just do it.

It would be however unfortunate to publish a book on Compliance Tools without giving a particular place to training, the piece would miss in the puzzle.

So much money spent by companies, by fair or foul means, especially when Compliance programs imposed as sanctions contain heavy training obligations leading people to retain word for word everything that is forbidden to them, in order to always abstain from now on. Training is thus the sharp point of such Hard Law appearing under the steel of Criminal Law's sword in amphitheaters and e-learnings. 

But also so much speeches about the necessity of a "Compliance culture" which should be instilled to firms, Compliance spousing with joy in an harmony with their "raison d'être" and the historical identity of this group of people which is the company itself through trainings which tell Compliance as a link, an outstretched hand toward those with whom managers want to renew a moral contract in an ethic for which they give the good example. It is not Prohibition anymore but Communication and Community that set the tone of a human dialogue with employees, stakeholders, administration and judges. 

It is possible to assume that the former does not exclude the latter, that Training should target all of this, the learning of mandatory prescriptions to follow without discussion but also the adhesion to guidelines, and this because everyone has understood that they are funded.

Everything and its contrary, then. "Learning by heart" takes here its full sense: get everyone to remember mechanically in order for no one to misstep (with always more machines which massively teach us the regulatory corpus on our mobile screens) but also succeed in bringing our "heart" in Compliance, thanks to specific training methods (with always smaller groups, with always less public discussions in pleasant places). Everything and its contrary, then.

It would be imperative but also sufficient to cumulate. Doing everything. Those who propose training softwares as those who organize conferences, meetings and travels and are favorable to this addition of face-to-face and distancing methods, of mechanic and of human relations. Concretely, at the end companies observe that since the first does not replace the second, costs add up. But, in Compliance, costs constitute a grave default of it, training taking a large part of this default. Managers end up finding the addition too heavy, especially if they thought that training of people is one of the public school's mission and not one of private companies' purpose!footnote-1837.

Moreover, training to Compliance is not outside Compliance Law, which makes it specific!footnote-1838. Indeed, Compliance Law, corpus of Ex Ante mechanisms, targets to concretize "monumental goals"!footnote-1836. Set by public authorities, these monumental goals are internalized in companies in order for them to implement expected means in order for them to be reached in the future. These monumental goals can be negative (that corruption, money laundering, human rights violations, financial system crisis, etc. shall not occur), or positive (that ecological equilibrium shall be restored, that education shall be supplied, that healthcare shall be provided, etc.).

Compliance Law takes as criteria of effectivity for implemented mechanisms, their reality, but also their efficiency, that is their ability to make sure their goal is achieved.Training must achieve its goal. Thus, in Compliance, the purpose is not only the one of every training, that is transmitting a knowledge in order to making the student more learned!footnote-1839, but it is to contribute to the "monumental goal" of Compliance Law itself, which is a practical goal and not a scholar goal. For example, training about the applicable rules concerning corruption should have an effect to reduce corruption. And because corruption is itself a part of Compliance Law, in the same way the Regulation Authority can force to educate oneself or train others, the Supervision Authority should control not only the reality but also the effectivity and the efficiency of trainings. 

However, the effectivity and the efficiency of Compliance training, because they are full part of Compliance Law, should be controlled by the Authority not only in their reality but also in their concrete ability to participate in the pursued goal. Thus, to keep the example of fight against corruption, training plays in it an essential role because the firm faces an alternative: either a mechanic solution consisting in setting literal interdictions, for example the interdiction to give up a value greater than a certain amount (according to the "anti-gift" rule) with the risk of getting around that every literal prescription offers, or a a solution by training consisting in explaining to everybody that it is wrong to corrupt but that it is acceptable to give samples. Training rather bets on spirit while the machine integrates the letter. 

But this refers to the Regulation and Supervision Authority which will appreciate the company due diligences to reach the goals. One observes that, more and more, Authorities economize one step: rather than explain to the companies how educate people that work for them or with them, regulators educate directly.  Is on this point remarkable the "guide" published in 2012, whose second edition of 2019 has been updated in 2020, jointly by the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the financial regulator (Securities &Exchanges Commission - SEC) to know everything about the Foreign Corruption Practices Act (FCPA). Through the explanations offered to everyone!footnote-1840 of the principles, the reminded definitions, the told cases, they are behaviors prescriptions which are formulated especially for foreign companies by the prosecutor authority and the American sanction authority, allied in this handbook which has such weight that we can consider that it is as valuable as a guideline, soft law creator of Law and rights. 

In the concentration of all powers which is often reproached to the Regulator, there is also the magisterium of the teacher, the one who educates stakeholders. After having assumed, on the American model, that the regulator should be the "advocate" of the rules for companies, proving to them the interest  that they have to respect them, it is logical that, in what some have called "Regulation, Act 2" this Regulator's pleading about the good news of Regulation for the firm justifying thus that this one integrates it in Ex Ante was prolonged in magistral lesson: the "regulator-institutor" explains to everybody how using rules for an always still in progress Law ("Better Regulation"). 

While training was before only peripheral, it is now at the heart. If it is so important, as every other "Compliance tool", it should take what we expect from it. The publications about training most often exhibit what it should be and a sorrowful spirit measures what sometimes appears as a huge gap between descriptions and realities sometimes reported. 

Educating being without any doubt one of the most difficult actions, we should probably neither describe a paradise of maieutics nor write a hot paper against what already has  the merit to exist, but list what we can expect from Training mechanisms when they apply to Compliance, because here, rather more than for the other tools, it is a mean obligation. Which content should have a training ? (I). Because Compliance Law targets training as one of the mean to reach "monumental goals" which constitutes the substantial heart of this branch of Law, the training dimension is not limited to stamped training, finding back this pedagogical dimension in almost all the other tools (II). In that, Training appears as the alpha and the omega of Compliance.

L'analyse des outils du Droit de la Compliance permet de mieux cerner ce qu'est le Droit de la Compliance dans son ensemble.

La "cartographie des risques" est analysée comme un outil essentiel de la Compliance, peut-être le plus important puisque ces cartographies sont des instruments élaborés en Ex Ante par les entreprises, ce qui correspond à la définition même du Droit de la Compliance, lequel est un Droit Ex Ante.

En cela, avant même de rechercher d'une façon plus analytique ce que peut constituer juridiquement l'activité pour une entreprise de dresser des cartes des risques qui l'entourent, pays par pays, activité par activité, 

 Le plus souvent l'on ne fait que décrire le mécanisme de cartographie des risques, sans le qualifier juridiquement. Le législateur ne fait pas davantage. Ainsi, dans l'article 17 de la loi dite "Sapin 2", la cartographie est décrite comme "la forme d'une documentation régulièrement actualisée et destinée à identifier, analyser et hiérarchiser les risques d'exposition de la société à des sollicitations externes aux fin de corruption, en fonction notamment des secteurs d’activité et des zones géographiques dans lesquels la société exerce son activité.". De la même façon, l'article 1ier de la loi dite "Vigilance" du 27 mars 2017 vise "une cartographie des risques destinées à leur identification, leur analyse et leur hiérarchisation".  

Ce sont des descriptions, ce qui ne suffit pas à constituer une définition : le texte ne vise que la "forme" que cet élément d'information prend, sans en dire davantage. La lettre du texte descriptif inséré dans la seconde partie de l'article 17 de la Loi dite "Sapin 2, renvoyant à la première partie de cet article, le vise expressément comme une "modalité" d'une "l'obligation": cette "obligation" consiste à prendre des "mesures destinées à prévenir et à détecter la commission, en France ou à l'étranger, de faits de corruption ou de trafic d'influence". Pour bien remplir cette obligation, l'entreprise doit disposer de cet "outil" qu'est la cartographie des risques.

Si l'on sort du cas particulier de la lutte contre la corruption, la méthode est la même. Ainsi, de la même façon lorsqu'on consulte les documents par lesquels les Autorités de Régulation, par exemple l'Autorité de marché financier, présente la manière requise pour bien identifier les risques, y compris les risques de "non-conformité"!footnote-1734, l'on y trouve une description des façons de faire, mais sans davantage rencontrer de définition, encore moins de définition juridique de cette cartographie. L'on retrouve cette même tendance dans le procédé de la Compliance elle-même,

Peut-être que que cette absence de définition juridique de la Cartographie des risques n'est-elle elle-même que le reflet de l'absence plus générale du Droit dans dans l'ensemble des mécanismes de Compliance, absence paradoxale pour un espace si empli par ailleurs de la fureur pénale, sans doute parce que si souvent réduite dans sa présentation à un process mécanique, n'apparaissant juridique que sous son mauvais jour : celui de la sanction. Cette conception mécanique d'une Compliance comme process conduit à proposer que des machines et non des êtres humains en établissent les outils, notamment la cartographie des risques. Finis les compas et les cartes d'état-major, bonjour les bases de données et les connexions automatiques pour que des voyants d'alerte s'allument.

A lire les lois, il est acquis pour le législateur que la cartographie n'est qu'un "outil", la loi dite "Sapin 2" la désignant comme une "modalité". Prenant appui sur cette nature instrumentale, il faut donc chercher ce pour quoi est fait l'outil. Soit il est conçu pour que la loi ne soit pas méconnue, la cartographie repérant par exemple le risque accru que le Droit (souvent appelé la "réglementation") soit violé : c'est qu'il est usuellement désigné sous l'appellation étrange de "risque de conformité", terme que l'on trouve le plus souvent sous la plume de non-juristes et dont l'expression de "risque pénal" est sans doute l'ancêtre.

La cartographie permet alors à l'entreprise d'exécuter son "obligation de Compliance", c'est-à-dire de faire en sorte en Ex Ante que la loi soit respectée en éliminant par avance le risque qu'elle ne le soit pas. Ainsi dès 2008, l'OCDE définissait la cartographie des risques par ses objectifs, à savoir "mettre en place des moyens efficients pour réduire des risques de fraudes et de corruption et pour mettre en place des enquêtes efficients en concentrant les efforts sur les procédés efficaces". !footnote-1739. 

Si la notion de corruption renvoie au Droit pénal, celle de fraudes est plus vaste que le Droit car si "la fraude corrompt tout" toute fraude n'est pas saisie par le Droit si la lutte pour la combattre n'emprunte pas un instrument juridique. Plus généralement et par ailleurs, de nombreux risques ne concernent en rien le Droit et devront pourtant être pris en considération par l'entreprise comme autant d'éléments d'information à considérer pour son action : les risques économiques, les risques naturels ou les risques politiques, ainsi que les "risques de marché", à propos desquels les Autorités de marchés, comme l'Autorité de marché financier dresse régulièrement une "cartographie des risques"!footnote-1740 . Mais cette cartographie-là ne semble pas regarder le Droit, alors même qu'elle ne relève déjà plus de la seule bonne gestion interne de l'entreprise.

Ainsi, si l'on choisit de consulte non plus les lois mais plutôt des cartographies élaborées par des entreprises, l'on doit constater leur diversité, sans savoir si ces cartographies constituent une "modalité" d'une obligation juridique, devenant de ce fait par transitivité un objet juridique, ou si elles constituent plutôt un élément de détermination de la stratégie de l'entreprise, appelant donc une qualification comme un "acte de management", ce qui est neutre pour le Droit. 

L'on peut hésiter dans la réponse à apporter à la question, tout en soupçonnant l'existence d'une obligation générale de cartographier les risques, au-delà du cas particulier de la loi dite "Sapin 2" (dont le seul sujet est la corruption) car aujourd'hui de quoi le Droit ne se mêle-t-il pas ? Surtout d'un fait aussi important et prégnant et coûteux que la cartographie des risques, notamment dans des secteurs eux-mêmes "risqués" comme le secteur bancaire et financier, ou le secteur énergétique, ou (quittant la perspective sectorielle) dans l'espace digital ou dans le commerce international ? 

Pourtant l'on observe à quel point la "cartographie des risques" n'a pour l'instant été que peu pensée en Droit. Il est vrai que le juriste, qui toujours ordonne, a du mal à suivre ...  En effet, lorsqu'il est exposé  que la cartographie doit viser à la fois des "risques économiques", des "risques politiques", et ces "risques de conformité" (c'est-à-dire de violation future du Droit), le juriste a du mal à comprendre comment les "risques de conformité" pourrait être un élément d'un outil qui n'est lui-même qu'un élément d'un "Droit de la Compliance", dont on lui affirme par ailleurs qu'il faut l'appeler "Droit de la Conformité" ? Même sans être expert de la théorie des ensembles,  le juriste comprendre que cet élément de "conformité" ne peut pas être à la fois ce sous-ensemble et l'ensemble "conformité" dans lequel l'outil de la cartographie s'insère!footnote-1888.

L'on peut consulter de très nombreux écrits qui détaillent la cartographie, qui, par une sorte d'effet de miroirs, dressent des cartographies des exigences à laquelle l'entreprise doit se plier, pays par pays, textes par textes, secteurs par secteurs, loi par loi, aussi bien que des exigences de cartographies des risques de méconnaissance dans le futur de ces exigences ("risques de conformité").... Nous sommes face à un château de cartes, toujours plus minutieusement décrit, sans jamais rencontrer de qualification juridique. 

Si l'on cherche pourtant une qualification juridique, ne serait-ce que pour produire de la sécurité juridique, l'on se demandera par exemple si l'acte de dresser une telle carte constitue un fait juridique ou un acte juridique. Je ne vois pas que la question ait été même posée. Pourtant, les conséquences de régime en sont immenses. En effet, à supposer que cela ne soit qu'un fait juridique, peut-il être  un "fait justificatif" ? Les avocats y ont songé et ont plutôt trouvé du côté des Autorités publiques une  porte fermée, lorsqu'ils ont voulu se prévalu des faits de diligences que constituent les cartographies de risques pour échapper à des sanctions... 

Mais si dresser une cartographie n'était pas un simple fait mais pourquoi ne serait-ce pas un acte juridique ? La catégorie juridique des actes juridiques unilatéraux est là pour l'accueillir. Dans ce cas-là, la cartographie des risques engage l'entreprise et l'on observe que les autorités de régulation et de supervision, comme les juridictions, le conçoivent de plus en plus ainsi. Mais si l'entreprise est engagée par un tel acte juridique unilatéral que constitue la cartographie des risques, auprès de qui l'est-elle ? Plus précisément encore, si elle devient débitrice de l'obligation de cartographier, même si aucune loi particulière ne le lui prescrit d'une façon précise, alors il existe nécessairement un créancier bénéficiaire de cette obligation. Qui est-il ? Et pourquoi l'est-il ?

L'essentiel de cette contribution est de poser ces questions. Elles sont élémentaires. Elles ouvrent des pistes, celles que l'exercice de qualification juridique, de mise en catégorie juridique et de définition juridique, ouvrent. 

Si pour l'instant l'exercice de qualification a été peu pratiqué, la cartographie des risques étant étrangement laissé aux algorithmes, aptes à entasser des données et inaptes à définir et à qualifier juridiquement, cela tient peut-être au fait plus général que le Droit et le risque sont peu souvent directement associés. Le mécanisme de bonne gestion que constitue la cartographie des risques, notamment dans les organisations qui ne sont pas des entreprises mais sont en charge d'administrer et adoptent sans contrainte cette bonne méthode!footnote-1735, y incite lui-même d'autant moins qu'on peut lire qu'il s'agirait, via ces cartographies, pour l'entité méticuleuse d'identifier par avance notamment le "risque juridique"!footnote-1731, c'est-à-dire l'application qui pourrait lui être fait du Droit, application incertaine, application contrariante. Combien de séminaires à succès sur le "risque pénal"... Comme en défense, les juristes exposent d'une façon trop générale que le Droit est constitué pour lutter contre le risque, lequel est un fait. En effet l'on répète à longueur de rapports que le système juridique est là pour "sécuriser", le réduisant parfois à cette performance technique tenant à sa nature même, par le principe de "sécurité juridique", que l'Etat par sa permanence, sa violence légitime, son imperium, nous donne en échange la paix, que le contrat par la "petite loi" qu'il constitue offre aux parties qui l'édictent un havre de sécurité pour cet îlot de stabilité dans un futur qu'on ne connait jamais tout à fait ; gare à nous si l'on sort de l'ordre juridique car l'on retombe dans le risque...  

Ainsi, soit l'on est dans le Droit, assujettis aux exigences légales, et l'on bénéficie de sa sécurité spécifique, ce que les économistes désigneraient volontiers comme la "réglementation", soit on est dans la liberté de l'action, et l'on est alors dans le risque.... Il en serait comme pour les marchés, à propos desquels il faut choisir entre la liquidité et la sécurité :  si l'on veut de la liberté d'action, alors il faut moins de réglementation, et donc moins de sécurité, plus de risque.... Cette opposition traditionnelle et si souvent relayée en économie est remise en cause par l'obligation de cartographie des risques car si ceux-ci sont établis, ce n'est pas pour les connaître en soi mais pour les combattre, au-delà de l'obligation classique d'information sur les risques, dont on trouve de nombreux ancrages dans les branches du Droit, notamment le Droit des sociétés, notamment celles exposés aux marchés financiers (I). 

Dès lors, puisqu'il y a sous l'information classique de la prétention politique, de la volonté de "prévenir" le mal, qui se transforme rapidement dans la volonté de "promouvoir" le bien, le nouveau apparaît. La nouveauté est tout d'abord institutionnelle (II). En cela, la loi dite "Sapin 2", à travers l'instauration de l'Agence Française Anticorruption, a institutionnalisé ce mécanisme par lequel les entreprises "exposées" aux marchés financiers ou/et aux investisseurs internationaux, ou/et au commerce internationaux, présentent d'une façon claire et ordonnée -c'est-à-dire par une cartographie - les risques qu'ils ont identifiés dans leurs actions présentes et futures, rendant plus concrètement des comptes sur leur organisation structurelle d'analyse des risques. Des autorités publiques vont superviser les entreprises exposées à ces risques. Certes les banques y sont juridiquement accoutumées, mais les banques sont dans un secteur qui est régulé et supervisé. Ce qui est remarquable tient au fait que le Droit de la Compliance vient appliquer, via l'exigence de cartographie des risques, la technique juridique de supervision à des entreprises qui agissent dans des secteurs qui ne sont pas supervisés, voire qui ne sont parfois pas même régulés, par exemple l'immense champ du commerce international. De cette façon, ces entreprises, qui ne sont pas sectoriellement régulées, deviennent structurellement transparentes et supervisées au titre du Droit de la Compliance, qui contrôle notamment l'effectivité et l'efficacité du mécanisme de cartographie des risques. 

Le principe libéral selon lequel une entreprise ne rend compte que de son comportement et non de son organisation interne en est entamé, puisque la cartographie des risques est un mécanisme Ex Ante qui relève de la structure même des entreprises et dont l'effectivité est contrôlée par les Autorités publiques. Ainsi, par la seule technique imposée par le Droit, la méthode de transparence, naguère propre aux entreprises supervisées devient générale à toutes les entreprises agissant sur des marchés ordinaires, dès l'instant qu'un risque existe. C'est une nouveauté radicale, puisque le risque dont il s'agit n'est pas un risque de secteur et qu'une crise générale n'est plus à craindre. La rupture est ainsi opérée avec le Droit de la supervision qui jusqu'ici était insécable du Droit de la Régulation, l'obligation de cartographie des risques s'appliquant à tout "opérateur crucial" exposé au risque de corruption, en ce que celle-ci doit être combattue d'une façon globale. 

Dès lors, la cartographie des risque est un outil qui, au-delà de la simple description, prend sa définition d'une façon téléologique, comme est élaboré tout élément du Droit de la Compliance. Son but est de prévenir des risques qui compromettent des ambitions qui ne sont pas toujours de nature économique mais qui sont de nature politique (III). La lutte contre la corruption n'en est qu'un exemple, la loi dite "vigilance" exigeant elle-aussi une "cartographie des risques" en matière de droits humains, tandis que cette technique est reprise par des textes plus ou moins contraignant en matière environnementale. Certes des entreprises en position de porter de telles ambitions politiques, de force - en raison de leur position - ou de gré - par leur raison d'être ou par leur politique de responsabilité sociétale -, doivent le supporter, les transformant en acteurs politiques majeurs. Elles ne sauraient pour autant se substituer aux Autorités publiques, lesquelles d'une part fixent les "buts monumentaux" qu'il s'agit d'atteindre d'une part et qui d''autre part supervisent en Ex Ante et en Ex Post la mise en place et le fonctionnement de ces outils au sein des entreprises cruciales. 

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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.

This interview was conducted in French with Olivia Dufour, for an article published in French in the digital publication Actualité Juridique.

Its subject is  the confrontation between the current health crisis situation and the Compliance Law. 

Summary. After defining Compliance Law, distinguishing the procedural and poor definition and the substantial and rich definition, the starting point is to admit the aporia: the type of health crisis caused by Covid-19 will be renewed and it is imperative to prevent it, even to manage it, then to organize the crisis exit. Public Authorities are legitimate to do so, but because this type of crisis being global and the State being consubstantially linked to borders, States are hardly powerful. Their traditional International Law shows their  limits in this current crisis and one cannot hope that this configulration will improve radically.

In contrast, some companies and markets, notably the financial markets, are global. But the markets are not legitimate to carry out such missions and counting on the generosity of certain large companies is far too fragile in front of the "monumental goal" that is the prevention of the next health crisis, crisis which must never happen.

How to get out of this aporia?

By Compliance Law, basis of, in a literal and strong sense, the "Law of the Future". 

We need to be inspired by the Banking and Financial Compliance Law. Designed in the United States after the 1929 crisis to tend towards the "monumental goal" of the absence of a new devastating crisis in the country and the world,  this set of new legal mechanisms gave duty and power of supervision, regulation and compliance to market authorities and central bankers. These are independent of governments but in constant contact with them. Today, they claim to have as first priority the fight against climate change. Now and for the future, they must also be given the responsibility and the powers to prevent a global health disaster, similar to a global ecological disaster, similar to a global financial disaster. This does not require a modification of the texts because their mandate consists in fighting instability. Stability must become a primary legal principle, of which the fight against monetary instability was only a first example. By the new use that central banks must make of it by preventing and managing health crises, Compliance Law will ensure that the future will be not catastrophic.

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 written in English is the basis for an article published in French in the French journal Dalloz Avocat , in March 2020.

Summary of the working Paper.

If we perceive Compliance Law as an aggression of the private company and a binding set of mechanisms that have no meaning and added value for it, then the attorney has a utility: defending the business. It can do so not only during the sanctions phase, but also to prevent it.

But this function is not central.

It becomes so if we understand Compliance Law as a body of substantial rules, pursuing a "monumental goal": the protection of the person, goal injected by political bodies and taken up by the operator. From this, the company must convince everyone to take it back, inside the company and outside. In a general and contradictory debate, the attorney carries this conviction, because he and she is always convincing those who at the end judge (market, public opinion, etc.) that is their raison d'être.

(In this short document, the pop-ups refer to the different works that develop each of the points)

► Référence complète : Frison-Roche, M.-A., Articuler les principes gouvernant les sanctions et les principes animant le Droit de la Compliance, décembre 2019.

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► Ce document de travail a servi de base à la première des conférences faites dans le colloque qui s'est tenu sous la direction scientifique de Marie-Anne Frison-Roche et de Lucien Rapp, Les incitations, outils de la Compliance,  le 12 décembre 2019,  à Toulouse,

🚧 voir le document de travail, sous-jacent au thème général:  Incitations et Droit de la Compliance, ayant conclu le colloque

Il a ensuite servi de base à un article dans l'ouvrage Les outils de la Compliance, dans la collection Régulations & Compliance.

Lire une présentation générale de cet ouvrage.  

____

Résumé du document de travail : 

_____

Lire ci-dessous les développements.

This Working Paper served as the basis for an intervention in the conference organized in the conference cycle organized by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) on the theme: Compliance Tools, in collaboration with many university partners: this first conference is organized in collaboration with the Sciences po Economics Department and is held on November 28, 2019 at Sciences po and deals with the more specific theme of Risk mapping.

It also serves as the basis for the book edited by Marie-Anne Frison-Roche, Compliance Tools, which will be released in the Regulations & Compliance collection.

______

 Is the consideration by Law of the Risk Mapping mechanism so new?

At first glance yes, and one might even be surprised at this novelty, since this rational anticipation of risks should have been recognized for a long time. But this is perhaps due to the more general fact that Risk itself has only recently become an autonomous legal object in Economic Law, in particular because Risk does not have at all the same position in Competition Law and in Regulation Law (I) .. Its position is even opposed in the both, Risk becoming central in Regulation Law. Compliance Law being the extension of Regulatory Law, it is also built on the "concern" of Risk and the internalization of this consideration in enterprises therefore takes the form of mapping.

A closer look maybe not,even  before the specific  French laws, called "Sapin 2" and "Vigilance" and beyond them, case law decisions giving a general scope to maps drawn up by operators, or increasing the obligation that 'they have to do it (II). In this, general and precise technical Law offers points of support for Compliance Law, strengthening it in its tools.

This working paper has been the basis for the introduction in the presentation made in the conference organized by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) on the topic : Compliance Tools, in collaboration with many Universities partners. 

This first conference has been organized with the Sciences po Economic Department on November 28, 2019 on Risks Mapping. 

This working paper is articulated with a second working paper, being the basis of the first development of this conference, on the caractère nouveau ou non en Droit de l'obligation de cartographie des risques.

These two working papers are the basis for two articles published in the collective book, Compliance Tools, in the Series Regulations & Compliance. 

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).

________

"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.

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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.

This working document serves as a basis for a contribution to the Grands Arrêts de la Propriété intellectuelle (major cases in Intellectual Property), published under the direction of Michel Vivant, in the new section devoted to Regulatory perspective.

Summary:

Intellectual property, derived from the State and inserted in a public policy, can be conceived, not to reward a posteriori the creator but to incite others to innovate. It is then an Ex Ante tool of Regulation, alternative to subsidies. If private copying is an exception, it is not in relation to the principle of competition but in an insertion in a system of incentives, starting from the costs borne by the author of the first innovation: the owner of the rights is then protected , not only according to a balance of interests, but in order not to discourage innovative potentials and the sector itself. (1st decision).

The sectoral policy then pervades the intellectual property used to regulate a sector, for example that of the drug. While it is true that a laboratory wishing to market a generic medicine did not wait for the patent expiry of the original medicine to do so, it is not relevant to sanction this anticipation of a few days because investments made by the holder of the intellectual property right have been made profitable by it and because the public authorities favor generics for the sake of public health (2nd decision).

The systemic interest provides and that is why Internet service providers have to bear the costs of access blocking while they are irresponsible because of the texts. This obligation to pay is internalized by Compliance because they are in the digital system best able to put an end to the violation of intellectual property rights that the ecosystem requires to be effective. (3rd decision).

It is necessary to underline the paradox represented by the infatuation of the theoreticians of Regulation with intellectual property, whose legal nature it transforms by an exogenous reasoning(I). Influenced, the case law uses reasoning based on incentives, investments, returns and costs, so that the State obtains the operators expected behaviors (II). As a natural result, there is a sectoral segmentation, for example  in telecommunications or pharmacy, which ends up calling into question the uniqueness of intellectual property, according to the technologies and public policies that affect them  (III). There are still imputations of new obligations on operators just because they are in the technical position of implementing intellectual property rights: the transition from Regulation to Compliance is thus taking place (IV).

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

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📝  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).

First of all, this working document was used as a support for an oral intervention done in French on the general topic.  L'officier ministèriel est-il soluble dans la blockchain ? (Is the ministerial officer soluble in the blockchain?) at the "Club du Droit", which took place at the Conseil supérieur du Notariat on May 14, 2019, in Pars.

Consult the general presentation of the conference (in French).

Then it serves as a basis for an article to be published in the Revue Defrénois (in French).

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Introduction & Summary.

The technical analysis of the confrontation between the tool that is the blockchain and the function that ensure these particular people who are the "ministerial officers"!footnote-1542, might make it possible to deduce the use that they must make of it. .

For this, it is necessary to keep in mind this distinction so simple: the blockchain is a tool, a thing, a machine, an algorithm, a mechanical, mathematical power, while the ministerial officer is a human being.

This refers to the distinction that the Western legal system, whether Civil Law or Common Law, poses as summa divisio: the distinction between human beings and things. This first distinction is formulated so that we do not treat human beings as things, since they are legally qualified as "person"!footnote-1584. This is not a natural idea, because if the opportunity arises we would be inclined to treat the other human being as thing. It would be nice and effective. But Law, in its first principle, opposes it, to protect the one who can not afford to be a wolf for the other. This political reason implies that this distinction remains very clear and strong. Now, many try at any moment to make us forget it.

For this essential distinction to remain effective, not only should we not imagine human beings as things (reduced to their bodies, for example, or reduced to mechanical acts of consumption!footnote-1543), like this is notably described and denounced by Alain Supiot in his successive works!footnote-1582, but it is also necessary that, especially by an imagined vocabulary, one represents things as acting like people, whereas it does not only machines and tools.

But technology represents more and more things with anthromophormi forms and reactions , through robots which "speak", "intelligent" machines, etc. The economic success of promoters of machines and other human-like robots, mechanical solutions presented as "intelligent", is based on forgetting the distinction between the person and things. It is certainly possible to erase this distinction from our system of thought. The difficulty is that it is the basis of Western Lawl!footnote-1583 and that there are strong reasons to keep it because this distinction protects the weak human being from injustice, permits him and her to participate in the general  order, to avoid an order built on a pure balance of power which can only lead to violence.

It is this background that is played in the practical questiond of insertion of blockchains and other technologies and the way in which the various professions must exercise their functions today. If these tools are consistent with these functions, or even improve them, professionals must welcome them without suspicion, or even participate directly in developing them. If these tools are not capable of fulfilling certain functions entrusted to these professionals, then these functions must not be inadvertently or maliciously inserted into a blockchain, whose capacity for preservation and reliability does not amount to anything, because a thing doesn't have any ability to think.

This is why we must start from the functions, by dinstinguising the technical function of conservation, duplication and elaboration of acts (I).

It seems that assuming the technical reliability of preservation and duplication acquired through the blockchain, as soon as there is a part of elaboration in the act, human intervention must step in because a machine is unfit to check the facts. Here we find the distinction between the retranscribed negotium, this retranscription never being mechanical, and the instrumentum itself, which, split from what gave rise to it, can be subjected to duplicative and conservation technologies. These technologies of conservation and duplication could be so efficient that the notions of original and copy could be questioned because of the reliability of the blockchain (II).

Thus the blockain is an effective technology on the instrumentum as documents divided from the negotium, but it can not guarantee the correspondence between the two ; it has only the reliability in the conservation, the availability and the duplication to infinity of the instrumentum, of what is extremely useful, and justifies that ministerial officers incorporate this technology. But the function of these are not limited to being agents of conservation and duplicators. We do not simply move from the copyist monk to the blockchain. The main and so precious function of the ministerial officers is to check the accuracy of the mentions of the instrumentum in relation to the reality of the negotium. This is so precious for a market economy to have this correspondance!footnote-1585. The ministerial officer does so as a human being, while a machine can neither check this correspondence nor advise the parties - especially not the weak part in the negotium. This is why the State - which has never ignored the effectiveness of "decentralization" techniques - has decentralized its office and its correspondance. With a sole and autonomous machine, it is not possible to know if  acts correspond to the objective reality of the transactions (their object) as well as to their subjective reality (consent). If we choose not to entrust this to human beings carrying this function, for which a machine is unfit, it would be a political choice It will have a price (III).

This would be the choice of a very liquid and unsecured market (without intermediary, with the benefit of lower cost in Ex Ante and higher risk for the long term). In policy, the balance is always between security and liquidity, especillay in financial systemic policy. This was done by American Law, wich prefered low costs and high liquidity, especially for real estate loans, which were securitized by subprime mortgages. For the moment, this choice is not made in this sense by European Law, safety concern in the elaboration of the acts being preferred and the distinction between the human aptitude and the mechanical aptitude remaining. And we know that in the first system the reajustment takes the form of a general crisis, which reinjects the reality of the negotiums, lost in the instrumentums.  What price are we ready to pay ?

Once this distinction is clearly made, because the elaboration of an acte mus be made bye the ministerial officer, human being invested by the State of the particular charge ensures the accuracy of the mentions of the act with the reality of people, wills, obligations and goods, it is all the more expedient for ministerial officiers to organize themselves to develop blockchain technology. Indeed, once this act has been developed reliably, ans as such deserves to be "authentic", because of the continuum between elaboration, preservation and duplication, because it is up to the ministerial officiers to draw up the deeds more incontestably reliable. It is up to them to equip themselves with the technological means of best conservation and duplication of acts elabored by them (IV). 

Ce document de travail sert de base à une conférence dans la Journée d'étude : "J'ai toujours été pour tout être". Guillaume Dustan ou l'infini des possibles", du 28 mai 2019.

Ecouter la conférence. 

Il est aussi référencé dans l'Emission qui lui est consacrée par France Culture le 15 février 2020. 

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J'ai toujours été pour Tout Etre. 

"Tout Etre", c'est un très bon plan. Personne ne l'a : ce plan est trop onéreux, trop aristocratique, trop dévastateur pour celui qui  le conçoit et le déroule. 

C'est pourtant ce qui fît William. Etre un homme accompli.

Le poser, le dire, le mener, suppose des qualités consubstantielles qui se cumulent, qui sont immédiatement acquises, visibles, constantes. Elles font se diriger toutes les flèches contre l'impudent. Depuis le départ et jusqu'à la fin. L'essentiel, la beauté, la prouesse d'un tel plan tiennent en ce qu'aucune de ces qualités ne se contredisent, ne s'affaiblissent les unes les autres, alors qu'on les met usuellement soit en choix exclusif soit en balance.

Que le corbeau, cher à Guillaume d'Occam, puisse être effectivement pleinement noir et encore être aussi pleinement blanc, en même temps, et pour autant n'en jamais devenir gris. Sinon la vie ne serait plus que grisaille, gribouillage et improvision. Il fallait que jamais la pureté du blanc ne vienne assombrir la pureté du noir. Tout noir et tout blanc, pleinement. Pour William faire différemment aurait été gâcher ses talents. Qui étaient si grands. Dès le départ, quand il était tout petit. Et jusqu'à la fin. Si douloureuse.

Cela fût un plan bien conçu, bien mené. Très réussi. Nous parlions souvent ensemble du dialogue de Platon, Le Philèbe , dans lequel celui-ci récuse le "mixte" pour louer la beauté du geste pur, du plaisir pur, ceux qui sont liés à l'inattendu et à la pureté de l'âme. Tout ce que les mécanismes d'intérêt, de calcul et d'opportunisme détruisent. Parce que William "a toujours été" du côté de la pureté, c'est-à-dire de l'absence de calcul, il ne pouvait y avoir de place pour le gris, ce mixte par exemple. L'âme de William était si pure.

Ainsi, Guillaume Dustan ne gâcha pas William Baranès. L'intensité de la couleur de l'un laissa intacte la pureté de la couleur de l'autre. Car " Tout Etre" demande avant tout de ne pas transiger, ni avec autrui ni avec soi.

Etre du côté du Tout, puisque William a "toujours été pour Tout Etre", cela ne laisse pas la place à grand chose, pas même pour la respiration. L'on comprend  qu'à un moment le souffle lui ait manqué. Et là personne n'est venu puisque Tout Etre c'est prétendre se suffire. 

Car qui réussit à " Tout Etre" ? 

Cest-à-dire à Etre totalement Tout d'une façon substantiellement ontologique et contradictoire, si cela n'est le Christ ? 

Celui-ci affirma être à la fois totalement Dieu et totalement homme.  Il est vrai que ce personnage ne plût pas à tout le monde et qu'il fût crucifié à la grande joie de beaucoup et grâce à la souplesse du Tribunal dont il relevait de jure, l'eau étant disponible en abondance  pour effacer toutes traces sur les mains de ceux qui auraient eu à perdre s'ils avaient exercé leurs responsabilités, le reste s'efffaçant dans l'indifférence .

"Tout Etre" c'est affronter dès le départ la perspective possible de cela. Avec la douleur par avance du spectacle non pas de ceux qui vous crucifient, non pas de ceux qui vous jettent des pierres sur le chemin, mais de tous ceux qui n'en ont rien à faire alors que l'ascèce de cette vie Totale fût conçue et menée pour eux. La dimension christique de la vie de William Baranès est tangible par cette complétude qu'il attînt en étant tout aussi  pleinement Guillaume Dustan. Quand le calvaire commença pour cette personne entière, littérallement entière, personne ne bougea. 

Un plan de cette ambition, Tout Etre, tout de suite et pour toujours l'on le retrouve chez Napoléon, qui fût  lui aussi tout de suite Tout  et qui ne trouva quelque repos qu'à Sainte-Hélène. Car il faut des îles pour contenir des personnages si grands : en les entourant d'eau, on peut tenter de les sauver d'eux-mêmes. D'ailleurs William partit dans des îles pour y exercer son office de juge.

Il pensait peut-être que l'eau pourrait éteindre le feu. Mais dans la maison qui brûlait, quand il fallut ne sauver qu'une chose, il fît comme répondît Cocteau : il ne sauva que le feu. Cocteau ne disait cela que pour faire de l'esprit, allant quant à lui de fête en fête, alors que William se consuma pour ne garder que le plus précieux des précieux pour qui ne veut que le Tout : garder la flamme. Comme une vestale. William était un classique.

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 je ne saurais dire quelle place avait l'amitié et encore moins l'exercice du Droit pour Guillaume Dustan, mais je crois pouvoir dire celle qu'ils occupaient pour William.

Là encore, cela serait méconnaître qui était William de monter l'un contre l'autre, d'opposer l'ami et le juriste, comme si l'on devait décrire un personnage privé, celui qui fut l'ami par exemple, et un personnage public de la fonction publique, juge administratif, auteur d'écrits de Droit ou de réflexion sur le Droit.

En effet, lorsque nous discutions ensemble en soliloque partagé, le Droit avait une grande place. Nous n'étions qu'étudiants lorsque nous avons commencé à parler du Droit et de l'Injustice, ce qui nous permit plus tard, devenant plus grands en âge, de rédiger des écrits, de diriger des ouvrages et d'organiser des manifestations sur la Justice et sur le Droit.

Des descriptions de lui semblent présenter son "côté juriste" comme un élément annexe,ou paradoxal, ou un paravent, ou un pis-aller (il faut bien trouver une source de revenus...., être fonctionnaire....). C'est lui faire injure. Celui qui pose "Tout Etre" ne saurait perdre du temps avec des à-côtés, s'affaiblir avec des besognes sans intérêt ou sans rapport avec son plan. Dans son plan, la Justice et le Droit ont une grande place.

Prenons un autre auteur qui, avant que Guillaume Dustan ne l'exprime à son tour et à sa manière, avait réfléchi sur la façon dont la société broye les êtres humains, ce que l'on pourrait désigner comme l'injustice du monde, Kafka. Alain Supiot, professeur de droit, a montré dans sa leçon inaugurale au Collège de France en 2012 et dans un article paru récemment dans le Nouveau Magazine Littéraire sur "Kafka, artiste de la Loi", que Kafka était juriste pour une compagnie d'assurance, vérifiant la réalité des accidents du travail et que cela marqua profondément son oeuvre, que l'on dit romanesque. Il faut avoir étudié, dossier après dossier, les bras et les jambes brisés par les machines aveugles et qui ne s'arrêtent pas tandis que le sang coule et que le corps se révulse, pour écrire ensuite Le procès ou La colonie pénitentaire....

Pour William, cela fût la même démarche. A l'envers. Ayant vu enfant la famille et la société broyer les êtres humains innocents, il choisit de devenir juriste, de connaître le Droit, de parler du Droit et de le pratiquer. Non pas parce qu'il faut bien choisir un métier et que l'ENA mènerait à tout. Non. Parce que l'injustice qui fût pour lui comme un bain d'acide dans lequel il trempa, ce qui donne de l'acuité, puis vit chacun y couler, il décida de le décrire, et sans doute Guillaume le fît aussi totalement, mais il décida également de la combattre. Dans le Tout, il y a l'action.

Nous n'avons à nous résigner de rien. Surtout pas si nous sommes des personnes entières. L'injustice, on la repère par l'expérience. Comme le dit Ricoeur, l'injustice est un fait qui rend "perspicace" et nous évite de perdre des forces et du temps à chercher le point exact de ce qui pourrait être le "juste". Puis, nous devons le dire, car "dire l'injustice", c'est déjà faire quelque chose en faveur de celui qui en est victime (Arendt: dire, c'est déjà agir pour autrui). C'est pourquoi William fît de nombreux travaux de philosophie de la justice en tant que celle-ci est nouée par un souci pour autrui, constitue donc un lien avec celui-ci, c'est-à-dire constitue l'amitié (I).

Plus concrètement encore, William choisit d'être juge, non pas par dépit et mauvais classement de sortie à l'ENA du fait de notes de stage catastrophiques - il est vrai que faire des leçons de morale à ceux qui notent se paye -, mais parce qu'être juge représentait pour lui la concrétisation de la justice au bénéfice de tout un chacun (II).

Si William était juriste, et pleinement, c'était par amitié pour le genre humain, pour aider autrui, celui qui était plus mal loti que lui (III). Voilà le bénéfice d'une vision totale du monde : l'on trouve toujours encore plus malheureux que soi. Et William mena même l'exploit de trouver plus malheureux que lui : Autrui.

This working paper has served as a basis for an article subsequently published in French in the Law Journal Recueil Dalloz (see Compliance et personnalité, Recueil Dalloz, 2019).

It is enriched with notes, references and links. 

Summary: Compliance Law is often presented as empty and a mechanical set of procedures, in which human beings do not matter. It is the opposite.

The concern of human beings justifies it fights against the legal technique of the personality. Indeed as Compliance Law is an legal construction around Information and even in its core function of prevention of the systemic risks and its markets protection, the Compliance Law sets the requirement to know "genuinely" the person who is "relevant" - behind the legal person - for the purpose set, for example the fight against corruption or money laundering, establishing in principe what are only exception in Corporate Law or Competition Law.

In a more European conception of Compliance Law, as Law of direct protection of human beings beyong legal personnalities, from near the company and even far, humans being the real and effective beneficiaries of the new branch of Law. 

Référence générale : Frison-Roche, M.-A., Game of Thrones: a so classical Law. For the moment. Working paper, 2018,  http://mafr.fr/en/article/game-of-thrones-un-droit-si-classique/

 This working paper has been written to be the base for an article published in French, "Game of Thrones : un Droit si classique. Pour le moment", for a collective book Game of Thrones et le Droit. 

Summary. In this series filled with grandiose surprises, epic characters, reversals, and all the more so as it began to run faster than the book it was born, we would find only what we know already of Law: it would be enough to raise the disguises, as one does in a fable. We then find the classic legal rules (I), the reproduction in decal of the feudal legal organization (II), sometimes contested in the name of exogenous principles (III). But it is remarkable that the series is not over yet. But what will happen does not refer to legal issues that we do not control ourselves? Unknown season in the full sense of the term, frozen legal terrain and uncertain soil of a Law that would take the form of "faceless" and "walking dead"? (IV).

► Référence complète : Frison-Roche, M.-A., Pour une conception humaniste du Droit des affaires et de son enseignement,  document de travail, février 2019

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📝ce document de travail a été élaboré pour servir de base à un article publié un an et demie après sa remise, en novembre 2020  dans les  📘

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Alain Couret est un grand professeur de Droit et un très bon technicien de celui-ci. On se surprend soi-même non seulement à devoir souligner cette maîtrise technique insérée dans l'activité d'enseignement mais à prévenir qu'il s'agit d'une grande qualité.  Cette maîtrise technique et l'aptitude à transmettre le savoir juridique par la compréhension de ses principes de base, n'est-ce pas le métier même de professeur ? Si chacun l'admet, alors désigner ainsi Alain relèverait du pléonasme...

Mais l'on entend souvent aujourd'hui que l'art juridique ne serait plus qu'un art de tordre les textes et les mots dans tous les sens, que ceux-ci s'y prêteraient, voire qu'ils seraient faits pour cela, qu'il faudrait apprendre avant tout à argumenter et à contredire si habilement que le tiers spectateur, qu'il soit juge, auditoire ou opinion publique, sera persuadé à la fin que, dans le cas particulier auquel la discussion est cantonné, l'intérêt défendu est bien le meilleur, que c'est bien celui-ci qu'il faut protéger et non pas celui de l'adversaire, qu'il faut rendre effectif cet intérêt singulier-là. Quitte à penser différemment dans le cas suivant. D'ailleurs, il sera possible par la suite de soutenir une autre cause, puisque les situations ne sont jamais semblables. Dans cette façon de faire, connaître techniquement le Droit et ses principes de base apparaît secondaire. La technique ? Cela serait les machines qui s'en chargeront. Les principes ? Ils seraient à éviter, parce que cela ne servira à rien : à chaque cas sa solution.

Par ses enseignements et ses écrits, Alain Couret exprime le contraire : le Droit des affaires n'est pas réductible à un amas réglementaire, repose sur des principes qui reflètent la conception que l'on se fait de la place des êtres humains dans les échanges, dans l'entreprise, dans l'organisation marchande. Enseigner le Droit des affaires, c'est transmettre ces principes. C'est aussi les discuter. Ecrire, dans une continuité avec l'enseignement, c'est au besoin inventer d'autres principes, tandis que les machines continuent de stocker par milliers les dispositions techniques posées là, chacune équivalente à une autre. Enseigner des principes, seuls les êtres humains sont aptes et soucieux de le faire, à l'exemple d'Alain Couret. Si on l'oublie, alors les professeurs étant devenus des répétiteurs, les machines répéteront bien mieux qu'eux par un débit infatigable les "paquets réglementaires". Mais inventer de nouveaux principes, seuls les êtres humains ont souci à le faire, à travers des idées. Lorsqu'un auteur prit  l'image d'algorithmes qui "rêvent", c'était pour mieux poser qu'ils ne le font pas!footnote-1485, tandis que Lévi-Strauss définissait l'enseignement comme le fait pour une personne particulière de rêver tout haut. 

Et le Droit des affaires, n'est-à-ce pas d'imagination et d'humanisme dont il a besoin, plus que jamais, puisque l'intimité des affaires et de la technologie mécanise les êtres humains ? , à travers des personnalités comme celle d'Alain Couret, alors même que nous allons toujours plus vers un pointillisme et une déshumanisation, à laquelle sa conception réglementaire participe ? 

► Référence complète : M.-A. Frison-Roche, "What can Compliance Law build relying on the European Humanist Tradition", Working Paper, January 2019.

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This working paper has served as a basis for an article published in French in the collective publication Pour une Europe de la Compliance in the serie Regulation & Compliance.

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Compliance is often presented as a complex, technical, almost incomprehensible set, in that it consists only of empty and moving procedures, mechanical corpus about which the goal would be a question that would not arise.

The question of the purpose of these huge compliance devices might not even have to be asked. And this for two reasons.

Firstly it would only be a matter of following "processes", that is, mechanical and endless procedures. This conception of compliance is often called "kafkaes". Closer to closer, one thinks first of all of the book written by Kafka's The trial l and Welles' adaptation to the cinema in which the charcters are surrounded by walls that are narrowing around them, but it is rather to his novel In the penal colony that must be thought, that is to say to a procedural system of isolation which we do not understand the foundation, which makes it without foundation and without end but also which takes mainly the form of a machine in which the person is placed and which mechanically writes the Law on and under the skin of his back. This internalization of the rule in the body of the condemned - that the French legal system before the French Revolution associated only with "enormous crimes" - being the ordinary way of actual and ordinary application of the rules can correspond to a certain vision of the Compliance, detached from any purpose.

The question of the purpose of Compliance may also not have to arise for a second reason, almost the opposite: they would always be devices that are specific to particular sectors. Thus, the banking sector, the insurance sector, the drug sector, the agri-food sector, the telecommunications sector, the energy sector, etc. Then the opposite happens: too many goals! Since each of these sectors has specificities such that it includes purposes that are specific to each of them. For example continuity for energy, access information for telecommunications, control of systemic risk for banking and finance, protection and secret for private information, etc. Now, either these ends so diverse are indifferent to each other, or they can contradict each other. Therefore, to ask the question of the purpose of compliance mechanisms would be to move to the stitution of not even trying to understand "processes" to be exceeded by too many substantial purposes pursued at the same time and in contradictorily senses ... .

This is why the question of the purpose of the Compliance is not asked in a main way. Even less if it is superimposed with another goal that is the European construction ....

But on the contrary, if we confront this question of the aims of the Compliance Mechanisms by crossing it with another issue, older but also under construction, namely the question of Europe, it is possible to make an alliance of these two difficulties to transform them as an asset. That one can help the other. Indeed, both Europe and Compliance in their current states are two constructs with uncertain goals or behaviors most often only "reactive" (I). If we do not want to mobilize all our strength to limit our weakness, which leads rather to feed it, we can go draw on the unity of this Europe so diverse but which finds it unity in the protection of the human being by the very idea of ​​"person". However, Compliance Law can have the same unity, despite the diversity of sectors, and thus fill the meaning of these multiple procedures, providing the balance between information and secrets, circulation of data and conservation of that they concern, common and dialectic purpose that this European Compliance Law. in the process of being constituted can give the world an example in relying on the European tradition  (II).