Nov. 26, 2024
Conferences
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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, "L'impact du contentieux systémique sur l'office du juge" ("The Impact of Systemic Litigation on the Judge's Office"), Centre de droit privé et Unité de droit judiciaire, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), 26 November 2024, Brussels
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The event was organised by Professors 🕴️Séverine Menetrey, 🕴️Michèle Grégoire and 🕴️Stéphanie Lagasse.
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🕴️🕴️Before the general debate with the audience, the conference were followed by the speechs of two discussants:
They spoke in a personal point of view and their words are not reported here.
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► English summary of this conference: The first part of this conference consisted in defining what "systemic litigation" is. This concept was proposed in 2021: it refers to the hypothesis in which a system is involved in a dispute, and the judge's role is to take into account the interests of these systems which, however diverse they may be, all have similar interests. These identical interests are mainly future interests, which consist in not disappearing, the principle of sustainability being common to all the systems involved.
🔴on this notion proposed in 2021: 🕴️mafr, 🚧The Hypothesis of the Category of Systemic Cases brought before the Judge, 2021
Once this definition has been shared, the challenge for judges, who are often general law judges, particularly civil law judges, is how to deal with this new type of litigation. The first challenge is an institutional one. The emergence of systemic litigation justifies the creation of specialised chambers, which are linked to or reflect the specialisation of judges, itself linked to their ad hoc training.
🔴on the judges training, see the cycle on the Contentieux Systémique Émergent - CSE (Emerging Systemic Litigation - ESL) : 🕴️mafr, 🎤L'Émergence du Contentieux Systémique (Emergence of Systemic Litigation), 2024
The second issue is procedural. Judges need to adapt pre-trial procedures and find ways of knowing and understanding how systems work, before they can listen to their needs. But there are many people who claim to represent these needs: the classic question of the quality and interest for the people to be admitted to go before the court is central in systemic litigation. The first court decisions are rightly cautious, because it is so easy to want to defend the future interests of a system... But the judge must remain in control of the proceedings, and not allow the litigants to appropriate the systemic issue, for which the judge must innovate, in particular through the recourse he may choose to make to amici curiae.
The third issue is the art of judging, in this case the art of deciding, because it is difficult to judge the future, to judge a system, and this need to decide the future is normally the role of the Legislator. However, judges must respond to the new demands built before them, both before the lower courts and the higher courts. Here again, prudence must guide them in deciding.
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🌐read the report of this conference published on LinkedIn
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