Food for thoughts

Aug. 18, 2020

Newsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation

Full reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., Can Coordination between local Regulators replace a unique centralized Regulator? Example of the European organisation of the Open Internet PrincipleNewsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation, 18th of August 2020

Read, by freely subscribing, the other news of the Newsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation

To go further, read Marie-Anne Frison-Roche's article: The hypothesis of interregulation 

 

Summary of the news

The principle of "open internet" enshrined in the European regulation of 30th of April 2016 guaranteeing a non discriminatory access to Internet contents and services. However, there is no European regulator to implement such a principle. Is it possible to guarantee the effectivity of this principle without a central regulator in charge of this principle? 

On 11st of June 2020, the BEREC (Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications) adopted guidelines concerning the application of the open internet principle. The BEREC is not a European regulator but a network of national regulators aiming to coordinate their actions. This body is only a consultative body but its recommendations are taken into account by national authorities which have deep legal power, as Osborne-Clarke said about the technical implementation of the European principle of open internet at the national level.  

It is thus non necessary to have a central regulator to ensure the effectivity of a principle since the moment when there is a local regulators network able to coordinate their actions through soft law.   

Aug. 17, 2020

Newsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation

Full reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., Risk Mapping: is it legally different when it is made by Regulatory Bodies or by Regulated Enterprises?, in  Newsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation, 17th of August 2020

Read, by freely subscribing, other news of the Newsletter, MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation

 

Summary of the news

Each year, the Autorité des marchés financiers (French financial markets regulator), the European Central Bank and the Agence française anti-corruption (French anti-corruption agency) publish risk maps. At first glance, risk maps established by the regulator aim to both help regulator and the regulated company to face risks by anticipating them. These documents would only be an assistance brought to firms in their Compliance mission and not an injunction from the regulator to take into account the risks that it emphasizes.  

However, Law forces firms to do their own risk maps under penalty of sanctions. Since the regulator has previously published its own risk map, can companies, obliged to write theirs, deviate from it? If the firm follows the map published by the regulator, can it protect itself against this if it is accused of not having fulfilled its compliance obligations? On the contrary, if the operator does not follow regulator's risk map, can this be blamed on it? Formally, regulator's risk maps do not come with an injunction to take it into account but, as everyone knows, any recommendation from a regulator or supervisor must be taken into account.

The legal solution could here be the implementation of a system of "comply or explain" which would mean that if the firm decides to no follow the risk map established by the regulator, it must be able to justify its choice. 

 

To go further, read:

Aug. 14, 2020

Newsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation

Full reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., Is Regulating Hate and Infox a legal obligation imposed to the Digital Enterprises or the expression of their free will to contribute to Democracy?Newsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation, 14th of August 2020

Read, by freely subscribing, other news in the Newsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation

 

Summary of the news

Internet permits to access to expanded knowledge but also make easier the broadcasting of fake news and hate speeches. Unfortunately, public powers cannot know who broadcast these fake news and hate speeches and are so not able to fight efficiently against this. A solution would be to expect from digital firms that they find a way to contain these fake news and hate speeches that they structurally contribute to diffuse. 

Digital firms already do that and especially Facebook which plans to sensibilize its American users to 2020 presidential elections. However, digital firms explain that if they fight against fake news and hate speeches, it is only because of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). But, even if it is a calculus to get a better reputation and avoid boycott actions, this remains a willingness of the firm which is therefore neither forced to succeed, nor even to act. 

The solution proposed by Compliance Law is to make of this effort a legal obligation by internalizing in crucial operators (digital firms) the "monumental goal" to fight against fake news and hate speeches so that digital companies are required to act and that they are supervised by public authorities in this task. The forthcoming law about digital services will impose to digital firms Ex Ante obligations while the law of 22 of December 2018 related to the fight against information manipulation already forces platforms operators a legal obligation to "cooperate" in the fight against fake news. 

 

To go further, read : 

Aug. 13, 2020

Newsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation

Full reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., Why the decision of the French Constitutional Council of 7.08.2020 about authors of terrorist offences is so informative for Compliance & Criminal LawNewsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation, 13th of August 2020

Read, by freely subscribing, the other news in the Newsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation 

 

Summary of the news

On 7th of August 2020, the Conseil Constitutionnel (French Constitutional Court) made a decision concerning the constitutionality of a French law implementing safety measures against authors of terrorist offenses after their sentence. The law permitting to impose, through an act from the administration, various controls or interdiction to communicate with some people for authors of terrorist offenses after the end of their sanction.  

Although the Conseil Constitutionnel estimated that such dispositions was disproportionate with regards to the objective, which prompted it to censor the text, it recognized that, since terrorism seriously disturbs public order through intimidation and terror, the fight against terrorism contributes to the objective of constitutional value consisting of preventing attacks on the public order. Thus it is not the nature but the intensity of the proposed measures which pushed the Conseil Constitutionnel to state this text not constitutional. By the way, the Conseil affirms that if the legislator submits it a law whose the measures are more proportionate to the goal, these, although Ex Ante and justified only by the existence of a risk, will be declared in conformity with the Constitution.

The Conseil Constitutionnel confirms here that the fight against terrorism financing is a "monumental goal" of Compliance Law. 

Aug. 11, 2020

Newsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation

Full reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., Against money laundering, what time matters? Does it work, between ExAnte and ExPost? (BIL case)Newsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation, 11th of August 2020

Read, by freely subscribing, the other news in the Newsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation

 

Summary of the news

The activity of money laundering is detrimental not only in itself but also because it permits the development and the sustainability of other criminal activities such as drug trafficking, weapon trafficking or human beings selling. Fighting against money laundering could permit to indirectly fight against these underlying activities, by the way very difficult to fight. Thus, the fight against money laundering has become a "monumental goal", which justifies the adoption of tools sometimes much more powerful than those used by classical criminal Law. For the sake of efficiency, the legal obligation to prevent money laundering is given to every body able to do it, as banks, real estate agents or gaming society, under the penalty of sanction. 

On 10th of August 2020, the Luxembourgish financial market supervisor convicts the International Bank of Luxembourg to pay a fine of 4,5 millions of euros because of weaknesses detected in its process of fight against money laundering. However, when the sanction has been pronounced, the bank had already remedied the weaknesses identified. It is important to observe that what is important for Compliance Law, it is not that a non compliant behavior is punished but rather that the crucial firm modifies its behavior in order to being more efficient in the realization of the "monumental goal", only concern of the public authority. Thus, an Ex Post sanction against the crucial operator is not an end in itself and can be justified only if it permits to incite the crucial operator to act or rather to desincite to do anything. Compliance Law is an Ex Ante legal system. 

 

To go further, read: 

Aug. 10, 2020

Newsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation

Full reference : Frison-Roche, M.-A., The practical utility to have a firm definition of "Compliance"Newsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation, 10th of August 2020.

Read by subscribing the other news in the Newsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation

 

Summary of the news

Some says that defining Compliance is a theoretical and non useful exercice that should be left aside to tackle the study of concrete technical cases. However, to be able to use Compliance tools, it is first necessary to have a clear, firm and simple idea of what is Compliance. Moreover, the future of this new branch of law intensely depends on the definition we choose to use. 

Compliance Law gives to some crucial private firms new responsibilities such as the one to fight against global dangers or the one of saving the planet. In this, Compliance Law can be perceived as a kind of new deal between the private sector and public authorities, with the only difference that this time the consent of the private sector is not required.

Some would say that the concretization of such projects is the duty of the State and that private firms, if they must respect the rules, do not have to find a way to concretize a "monumental goal". However, the world face new and systemic dangers in the face of which the State alone is powerless, technically or geographically, and against which crucial companies can act.

It is not about, as some advocate to put human being aside of Compliance Law by letting machines decide. It is about placing the human being and its protection at the heart of Compliance Law. In this, Compliance Law can become a new humanism. 

 

To go further, read Marie-Anne Frison-Roche's working paper, The Dreamed Compliance Law 

June 18, 2020

Publications

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____

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

____

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.

________

 

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.

 

1

Mélanges Pierre Godé, off-trade book, 2019. 

3

It is in particular the idea of the movement of analysis of Law & Literature which poses that by telling the past in one way or another, by thus inventing it, Law, and in particular the Judge, invents the future and being written, creates it. On this movement which was powerful in the United States, v. Cabrillac, R. et Frison-Roche, M.-A., Droit et Littérature, à paraître. 

4

See infra I. Compliance Law as nightmarish octopus. 

5

On the fact that "social responsibility" makes it possible not to be legally responsible, cf. Supiot, A., Du nouveau au self-service normatif: la responsabilité sociale des entreprises, 2004; this is not the subject of this article and this question will not be developed here.

6

See, for instance, ..., Replace Regulation by norm by Regulation by Data, 2020. 

7

See, for instance, Frison-Roche, M.-A., Compliance Law (monography), 2016 ; Compliance Law, 2020. 

8

On what the cinema does with the whistleblower, with the availability of trailers and extracts from the films, see Frison-Roche, M.-A., introduction of the article The impossible unicity of the legal category of whistleblowers, 2019. 

9

Frison-Roche, M.-A., ... (retrouver sur LinkedIn). 

June 17, 2020

Thesaurus : Doctrine

Full reference: Salah, M. M., The Legal Framework for New Silk Roads: a Globalized Law at the Service of a Global ambition. When China Discovers the Virtues of Globalization of Law, International Business Law Journal, n°3, 2020, p. 319-351

This article is available for Sciences Po's students via the Drive in the folder MAFR Regulation et Compliance

June 17, 2020

Thesaurus : Doctrine

 

 
Référence complète : P. de Montalivet, Contribution à l'élaboration d'une taxinomie juridique. Les catégories de normes, entre genres et espèces, Mélanges en l’honneur de Michel Verpeaux. Révolution, Constitution, Décentralisation, Dalloz, 2020, 
 

June 10, 2020

Thesaurus : Doctrine

Full reference: Fasterling, B., "Criminal Compliance - Les risques d'un droit pénal du risque", Revue internationale de droit économique, 2016/2 (t.XXX), p. 217-237

Read the article.

May 28, 2020

Publications

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

 

Read the article (in French).   

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

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

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

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Introduction of the article

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

May 22, 2020

Thesaurus : Doctrine

Full reference: Support, A., "La refondation de l'Europe ne pourra se faire sans sortir des traités actuels" ("The refoundation of Europe cannot be done without leaving the current treaties"), column in Le Figaro, 22nd of May 2020

Read Alain Supiot's column (in French)

 

In this column, Alain Supiot underlines the opportunity offered by the judgment of the Court of Karlsruhe of May 5, 2020 concerning the proportionality of the unconventional monetary measures adopted by the ECB.

Updated: May 20, 2020 (Initial publication: June 11, 2015)

Thesaurus : Doctrine

Référence complète : Supiot, A., La Gouvernance par les nombres, col. "Poids et mesures du monde", Fayard, 2015, 418 p.

Lire la 4ième de couverture.

Lire la Table des matière.

Lire la conclusion de l'ouvrage.

 

Regarder les cours d'Alain Supiot reprenant les thèmes de l'ouvrage.

Regarder la présentation vidéo du contenu de l'ouvrage.

 

Lors de son édition en 2020 sous format de poche dans la collection Pluriel, Alain Supiot a rédigé une nouvelle préface : lire la nouvelle préface. 

 

L'ouvrage a été traduit en anglais par Saskia Brown. Il a été publié en novembre 2017 sous le titre : The governance by Numbers. The Making of a Legal Model of Allegiance.

 

May 8, 2020

Thesaurus : Doctrine

Full reference: Pistor, K., Germany Constitutional Court Goes Rogue, Project Syndicate, 8th of May 2020

Read the article 

March 22, 2020

Publications

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.

 

Jan. 29, 2020

Editorial responsibilities : Direction of the collection "Cours-Série Droit privé", Editions Dalloz (33)

Référence complète : LEROYER, Anne-Marie, Droit des successions, Coll. "Cours Dalloz-Série Droit privé", Dalloz, 4ième éd., 2020, 526 p.


Consulter la 4ième de couverture.

Consulter la table des matières.

Jan. 16, 2020

Thesaurus : Doctrine

Full reference: Féral-Schuhl, C., Cyberdroit. Le Droit à l'épreuve de l'internet, Collection Praxis Dalloz, Dalloz, 8th edition, 2020, 1731p.

 

Read the forth of cover (in French)

Read the table of contents (in French)

Oct. 24, 2019

Thesaurus : 05.1. CEDH

Full reference: CEDH, 24th of October 2019, Carrefour France v. France, n°21488/14

Read the decision (in French)

Read the press release (in French)

 

Summary of the decision

In this decision, the ECHR convicts Carrefour France to a civil fine for practices restricting competition committed by the company Carrefour hypermarkets France, dissolved and absorbed by its sole shareholder Carrefour France after the facts.

 

Oct. 18, 2019

Thesaurus : Doctrine

 Référence complète : Pfersmann, O., Le droit est-il narratif, la narrativité est-elle juridique ?, Revue Droit & Littérature, 2019/1 (n° 3), p. 169-179.

Updated: Oct. 8, 2019 (Initial publication: Nov. 22, 2018)

Publications

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.

 

1

On the more general fact that cinema is undoubtedly the medium which most seriously restores the state of the Law, c. Frison-Roche, M.-A., Au coeur du Droit, du cinéma et de la famille : la vie, 2016.

2

L'histoire du premier lanceur d'alerte, France Culture, septembre 2019. 

4

However, precisely the so common use of plurality ("whistleblowers") raises doubts about the uniqueness of the character. On this question, see. all the first part of the developments of this study, which leads to the conclusion rather than beyond the multitude of particular cases, there are rather two kinds of whistleblowers. V. infra I.

6

Thus, the adventures of Snowden were brought to the screen by Oliver Stone in 2016, Snowden. On the question of knowing whether this film "faithfully reproduces" or not the case, Schetizer, P., Le film Snowden est-il à la hauteur de la réalité?, 2017. This article is favorable to the whistleblower, and to the film which tells us with emotion his case, in particular because (sic), it is easier than to read the Washington Post.

7

Underlined by us.

8

Underlined by us.

9

About this directive, v. the developments infra

10

Underlined by us.

Updated: Sept. 25, 2019 (Initial publication: June 17, 2019)

Publications

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.

_______

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).

1

Il est remarquable que pour Bacon, Van Gogh, que le premier considére comme un "héros",  a peint d'une "façon littérale" et que c'est grâce à celui qu'il a pu grâce à son "technicité" restitué "la vie" désertique du paysage. 

2

Deleuze, G., Francis Bacon, rééd. par Badiou, A. et Cassin, B., 

3

...., in Verdier, R. (dir.), Jean Carbonnier. L'homme et l'oeuvre. 

4

Comment dès lors ne pas penser à la définition de l'écriture par Céline, la définition comme le fait de tanner sa peau sur la table de l'écrivain ? 

5

Terré, Fr., Jean Carbonnier et l'année sociologique, L'Année sociologique, 2007/2, vol.57, pp.555-569.

6

"le droit de la littérature est de n'y apparaître jamais comme auteur".

7

Comme le souligne très bien Frédérique Niboyer, pour montrer que les lois actuelles qui visent tous le cas possibles (ce qui est impossible) empruntent une méthode contraire à celle de Carbonnier : ""Le doyen Carbonnier avait une autre conception : une loi générale devait pouvoir s’adapter à tous (d’où le pluralisme du droit de la famille) tout en ouvrant des champs à d’autres ordres normatifs, alors qu’aujourd’hui le « légicentrisme » devient roi : la seule norme à laquelle on fasse confiance serait ici la loi qui, partant, doit être spécialisée pour chaque catégorie.".

9

Carbonnier, "A beau mentir qui vient de loin", 

Updated: Sept. 24, 2019 (Initial publication: Aug. 31, 2019)

Publications

 

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

 

___

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

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

This is not a trivial sentence.

 

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

 

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

 
 
I. THE QUESTIONING OF THE CLASSIC SYSTEM OF PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW
 
Since forever, but this is not suffcient to keep the system only for that, the world is legally organized around the concept of territory, which has as for corollary the notion - already more legal - of border. On this basis rests the postulate of International Law: parties, taking the legal form of States, which, if they have common interests, come into contact (A). Admittedly, the notion of "right of interference" has called into question that (B), but in the name of an altruism that does not destroy the territory. The new idea that appears here is that the territory would be no more than a part of an All, in the name of which one would be legitimate to speak, even to decide in the place of the State in whose territory an event takes place (C).
 

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.

Sept. 7, 2019

Blog

Lisant sur mon écran d'ordinateur un article en accès libre dans une revue en partie librement accessible numériquement, une mention attire mon attention.

Elle a de quoi laisser perplexe toute personne qui écrit des articles et ouvrage qui requiert des lectures, lectures dont on indique au lecteur la trace pour l'inviter à son tour à y procéder dans ses propres recherches. Dans des travaux de recherche, de découverte et d'interrogation, donc.

Voilà le texte de la mention. :

 

Des DOI (Digital Object Identifier) sont automatiquement ajoutés aux références par Bilbo, l'outil d'annotation bibliographique d'OpenEdition.
Les utilisateurs des institutions abonnées à l'un des programmes freemium d'OpenEdition peuvent télécharger les références bibliographiques pour lesquelles Bilbo a trouvé un DOI.

"sont automatiquement ajoutés" ?

Il s'agit littéralement d'un "outil d'annotation bibliographique" ?

Si l'on s'abonne (le prix n'est pas indiqué, mais quand on écrit "-ium", c'est pour dire que l'on sort du gratuit...; comme le fait l'entreprise américaine Academia qui propose rapidement de "upgrapder" par un service payant pour accéder ), automatiquement les références seront téléchargées dès l'instant que l'algorithme, répondant au nom de "Bilbo" (n'est-ce pas le nom d'un personnage dans Le seigneur des anneaux ?), mais qui dans le civil a un nom qui reproduit sa fonction (Digital Object Identifier) fonction exprimée en langue anglaise va "automatiquement ajouter" une référence aux autres références qui auront été tacquées par l'algorithme.

Est-ce raisonnable ? Est-ce efficace ? Est-ce sans danger ?

C'est mécaniquement efficace, dès l'instant que l'on conçoit la référence bibliographique comme un "entassement mécanique" (I). Mais la référence bibliographique est et doit être tout autre chose, ce que les machines ne peuvent en rien restituer : être le reflet du parcours intellectuel que l'être humain qui écrivit l'article ou l'ouvrage fit pour écrit ce texte-là, une invitation à la lecture (et les machines ne lisent pas, on en arrive aujourd'hui à devoir le rappeler). Cette définition qui fut partagée de la bibliographie, qui ne mesure pas l'ampleur de l'empilement mais dessine ce vers quoi l'auteur s'est tourné pour chercher, pour trouver des réponses aux questions qu'il s'est posées, cela seul une personne peut le faire. En rien "Bilbo" (II). Or, si l'on se repose sur celui-ci, contre un abonnement, pour faire cette tâche-là, qui n'est reflet de rien, non seulement la bibliographie ne sera plus rien, mais des effets pervers, comme ceux observés comme celui des "citations", vont s'accroître (III).

Ensuite, si Bilbo écrit les bibliographie, tandis que Sophia fait les conférences, pourquoi un autre algorithme, que l'on pourrait appeler Thesarus ne pourrait pas écrire thèse, livre, essai, article, en ayant compilé toutes les règles formelles à respecter. Pourquoi non ? On se souviendra alors que les machines et les suites de chiffres ne lisent pas, n'écrivent pas, ne conçoivent pas, n'apprennent pas (l'expression Learning machine est un oximore), ne mémorisent pas (la "mémoire" d'un ordinaire n'est qu'une image), ne traduisent pas, n'ont pas d'émotion, n'aiment pas. Seuls les êtres humains le peuvent. Le sait-on encore ? 

 

Lire ci-dessous une analyse plus détaillée.

Sept. 1, 2019

Thesaurus : Doctrine

Full reference: Bounie, D. and Maxwell, W., L'explicabilité des algorithmes est-elle un droit fondamental?, Column in Le Monde, 1st of September 2019 

Read the column (in French)

July 17, 2019

Thesaurus : Doctrine

Full reference: Roda, J.-C., La crise du droit antitrust in Mélanges en l'honneur de Jacques Mestre, coll. Mélanges, LGDJ-Lextenso, 2019, p. 839-854

Sciences Po's students can read the article via MAFR Sciences Po's Drive Regulation & Compliance