🚧L’invention du « droit à l’enfant ». Les conséquences de la pratique contractuelle comme source d’engendrement de l’enfant

 

 

1. Une solution « au cas par cas » peut modifier implicitement la conception même de la notion juridique maniée 📜👶 Quand on doit juger un cas, il est tentant de ne pas donner de définition, de ne pas se référer à une conception générale (que l’on qualifiera alors de « théorie », c’est-à-dire de ce qui ne sert à rien), de n’envisager que les effets  immédiatement engendrés par la solution apportée à la difficulté de la situation appréciée sans se préoccuper (ou en tout cas sans les exposer) des conséquences plus vastes qu’une solution nouvelle élaborée pour un cas particulier implique. En effet, en premier lieu, une présentation dite « pragmatique » ferait taire ceux qui adoptent une vision plus générale. En second lieu, en restreignant le champ de la discussion à un cercle étroit qu’on a soi-même choisi, à savoir le choix d’une solution particulière adéquate pour le cas spécifique soumis, on interdirait les observations venues d’une perspective plus large.

 

2. La solution « pragmatique » de l’arrêt du 14 novembre 2024 a changé le conception même de filiation 📜👶  Mais la jurisprudence de la Première Chambre civile de la Cour de cassation, notamment par l’arrêt du 14 novembre 2024, qui prétend n’apporter qu’une solution pratique à un cas particulier, à savoir un enfant né d’une GPA réalisée à l’étranger dont la reconnaissance d’un lien de filiation à l’égard de personnes qui ont désiré sa venue sans avoir aucun lien biologique avec lui, en admettant la validité d’un jugement d’exequatur du jugement étranger reconnaissant un tel lien, a changé la conception de la filiation. Puisqu’il implique désormais que soit juridiquement efficace en Droit français une filiation dont l’origine est la volonté des contractants judiciairement reconnue par le juge étranger.

 

3. L’on peut approuver ou non le changement conceptuel, mais il ne faut nier l’ampleur du changement📜👶 On peut l’approuver, on peut ne pas l’approuver, mais à tout le moins, il faut le dire. Les universitaires l’on dit. En effet, au-delà de la destruction de l’article 16 du Code civil qui, au titre de la dignité des personnes, interdit la GPA, c’est la conception de la filiation qui a été changée par cet arrêt de section. Cette décision emporte deux nouveautés. En premier lieu, l’article 16 du Code civil n’existe plus et cela peut contrarier ceux qui se réfèrent à l’ordre public international et pensent que la prohibition de la GPA est ce qui protège les femmes et les enfants. En second lieu, la création par un arrêt de section d’un nouveau lien de filiation, à savoir la filiation par contrat, peut contrarier ceux qui pensent que la filiation est une institution que des juges ne peuvent pas créer et, surtout, que le contrat est un instrument juridique qui ne peut pas engendrer des liens de filiation. Ou alors, il pourrait tout engendrer. D’autres pensent que cela est au contraire très bien, que c’est un progrès, que le contrat est notre avenir et qu’il peut tout engendrer, façonnant des institutions nouvelles (ici une « nouvelle filiation » à la main de la volonté des parties), la filiation n’étant qu’un début, le contrat pouvant engendrer de nouvelles conceptions qui doivent être recueillies par le système juridique. Peu importe que le système juridique soit petit à petit recouvert, disparaisse et ressurgisse avec de « nouvelles conceptions », celles que les contrats auront, sous la dictée de contractants puissants, conçues.

 

4.  Est aujourd’hui en jeu : l’avènement d’une filiation instaurée par pur et simple contrat 📜👶 Cette perspective pratique est aujourd’hui solidement ouverte. C’est parce que le contrat de GPA concrétise un « droit à l’enfant », concept nouveau changeant le système juridique, c’est sous l’angle du concept auquel celui-ci renvoie qu’il faut d’abord se placer, afin que chacun mesure la société et choisisse. On peut penser que suivant que nous avons vocation à être ceux qui procurent l’enfant (les agences qui ont construit le marché), ceux qui ont un projet d’enfants (les cocontractants, souvent abusés par ces agences), celles que le Droit appelait juridiquement la mère et qui délivre la prestation matérielle (elle s’engage par contrat à ne rien dire) et l’enfant (qui par nature ne dit rien), l’on choisira la voie créée par le juge d’une filiation que le contrat engendre ou l’on en restera au cœur de notre système juridique : la summa divisio entre la personne et les choses.

 

5. Solidité des conceptions, piliers du système juridique, et ampleur des  conséquences juridiques de leur modification📜👶 L’objet de cet article n’est donc pas de revenir en détail sur cette jurisprudence du 14 novembre 2024, examinée par ailleurs📎!footnote-4619. L’objet de cet article est d’insister sur ce que cause à un système juridique l’atteinte à la conception de la filiation et à travers cela, au premier des piliers posés par le système juridique, à savoir la définition juridique des êtres humains eux-mêmes. En effet, avant d’adopter ou d’admettre des solutions nouvelles📎!footnote-4620, il faut avoir à l’esprit les conceptions que le système juridique a ou peut avoir de ce qu’est un être humain, notamment ce qui l’engendre et l’ancre par rapport à ce qui l’a engendré : la filiation est donc une question certes de sentiments, de famille, mais aussi de politique et de social de premier plan. C’est aussi ce à quoi renvoie le principe d’indisponibilité des personnes📎!footnote-4621. L’on ne peut disposer de sa filiation parce que l’on ne dispose pas de son ancrage profond dans une société. On peut le regretter et soutenir que chacun pourrait avoir le pouvoir autocratique de se constituer à lui-même sa petite société. Cela est actuellement soutenu par des pensées aux États-Unis. En Europe, l’on ne soutient pas que le système social puisse être ainsi dynamité et abandonné par des personnes libres et puissantes. Les conceptions premières, qui relèvent du Contrat social, sont différentes. Le Droit doit refléter cela, notamment dans l’institution de la filiation.

 

6. Aucun système juridique, Civil Law ou Common Law, n’est dénué de conceptions premières qui en constituent l’ossature : le concept de filiation en fait partie. Le « droit à l’enfant » le modifie📜👶En effet, le Droit n’est pas qu’une accumulation de solutions concrètes trouvées pour résoudre des difficultés particulières. Que l’on soit en Civil Law ou en Common Law , il forme toujours un système qui repose sur des principes, des définitions et des catégories, posés par les textes, la jurisprudence, voire des contrats. Par exemple les êtres humains relèvent de la catégorie juridique des personnes. Il résulte de cette conception que s’emparer d’une personne est contraire à l’ordre public puisque c’est la traiter comme une chose. L’évolution des solutions qui, de cas en cas, attaque cela, conduise à le rappeler📎!footnote-4625.

 

7. Le cœur du système juridique français : distinction et articulation entre la personne et les choses.📜👶Le système juridique français est construit sur la distinction de la personne et des choses. Ce choix politique arrêté par le Droit romain📎!footnote-4626 n’a pas été remis en cause. La catégorie des personnes est une catégorie fermée, répondant à une définition, tandis que l’autre catégorie, celle des choses est une catégorie ouverte. Ainsi est une personne un titulaire de droits et d’obligations (le « sujet de droit ») tandis qu’est une choses ce qui n’est pas une personne. Il en découle deux types de droits : les droits personnels (qui portent sur les personnes), dont la portée contraignante est limitée car la personne doit toujours être libre (seul le juge pénal peut l’en priver) et les droits réels (qui portent sur les choses) dont la force contraignante est considérable car le titulaire d’un droit réel peut se saisir de la chose, la détruire, etc.    Il est en outre posé que tout être humain est, dès sa conception, une personne. Ces principes simples sont l’ossature de notre système juridique.  

 

8. La personne "est son corps"📜👶 Dans un tel système juridique, tout être humain vivant est inséparable de son corps : c'est pourquoi les coups portés aux corps humains vivants constituent des "agressions contre la personne", y compris les agressions perpétrées sur le corps d'une personne avant sa naissance. Parce qu'il n'y a pas de distance entre soi et son corps, une personne ne peut pas louer son corps en tout ou en partie, ne peut pas se vendre en tout ou en partie, et ne peut pas se donner en tout ou en partie.

 

9. Tout le droit pénal est fondé sur l'indissociabilité de la personne et de son corps📜👶 On pourrait concevoir un autre système. Un système juridique, c'est-à-dire une société dans laquelle, par exemple, les êtres humains seraient propriétaires d'eux-mêmes, ou du moins propriétaires de leur corps, et pourraient le céder, le louer, etc. ou même louer et s'approprier le corps d'autrui. Il y a là des intérêts convergents. Mais la tradition humaniste du droit européen l'exclut. Le principe de l'indisponibilité du corps humain demeure. Le droit pénal continue à le défendre en affirmant plus que jamais que le "consentement de la victime" ne peut justifier les coups et blessures.

 

10. Au cœur de l'état des personnes, la filiation, phénomène physique, est avant tout biologique📜👶 Cette inséparabilité de la personne et de son corps, qui participe de la définition même de l'être humain en tant que personne, a plusieurs conséquences juridiques majeures. Tout d'abord, la filiation est biologique📎!footnote-4623, liant l'enfant à la femme dont il est issu. L'État doit s'appuyer sur la réalité de ce lien biologique pour l'établir, l'adoption établissant elle-même ce lien et procurant à l'enfant un ou deux nouveaux parents. Dans les contrats de maternité de substitution, la femme qui porte l'enfant affirme, si une autre femme fournit l'ovule, qu'elle n'a pas de lien biologique avec elle, ce qui contredit la réalité épigénétique. Cependant, dans les contrats conclus à l'étranger, cette femme, qui n'est souvent pas cocontractante, intervient pour sécuriser la relation contractuelle et affirmer qu'elle n'a aucun droit sur le futur enfant, qu'elle n'a aucun projet parental et que si elle devait avoir des droits, elle y renonce par avance.

 

11. Dans notre système juridique, où tout être humain est une personne, le " droit à l'enfant ", qui fonde la cession d'un être humain, est donc " inconcevable " 📜👶 Dans notre système juridique, il est donc impossible de "concevoir" un "droit à l'enfant". En effet, il n'existe qu'un " droit aux " choses ou aux services. Parce que l'enfant est un être humain, une catégorie fermée correspondant à une définition précise, il ne peut faire l'objet d'un "droit à", d'un droit réel, qui permette, par exemple, l'accouchement forcé d'un enfant conformément à la loi, son rejet pour non-conformité, son transfert, etc. Cela n'est pas concevable car en Europe, les êtres humains ne sont pas des choses.

 

12. Le "droit à l'enfant" est inconcevable à l'heure actuelle, mais on peut toujours repenser la distinction entre les personnes et les choses, en la remplaçant par le pouvoir normatif du contrat📜👶 Il est vrai que l'on peut concevoir différemment la société et le système juridique qui la sous-tend. Par exemple, dans le droit des nouveaux États des États-Unis, il est admis qu'un enfant peut être conçu par la seule force du contrat. Il n'y a pas de mère au sens biologique du terme. Il y a un ou plusieurs "porteurs d'un projet d'enfant" et un co-contractant capable de réaliser ce projet, c'est-à-dire une agence. Dans un marché mondial de personnes pouvant fournir les services requis, tels que le don d'ovules, le don de gamètes et la gestation, l'agence choisit ce qui conviendra au projet, et l'exécution de ce contrat aboutira à la naissance d'un enfant dont le lien avec les "parents d'intention" sera le plus souvent établi par un juge. La prestation est rémunérée, la qualité et l'adéquation de l'enfant dépendant des exigences des cocontractants de l'agence.

 

13. Jusqu'à présent, la substitution conceptuelle en faveur du contrat a été écartée par le refus de la société d'un " marché total "📜👶 Ce concept a été rejeté pour l'instant, sauf dans les marchés noirs, voire illégaux, où l'on vole des nouveau-nés pour alimenter des réseaux illicites. Mais pour l'instant, cette activité ne fait que se développer, et très bien, sous les cieux d'une société de " marché total "📎!footnote-4618  !footnote-4618 où les êtres humains peuvent offrir tout ce qui a une valeur marchande. Pour l'instant, l'Europe et le système judiciaire français refusent de se concevoir comme un "marché total".

 

14. L'affirmation selon laquelle une nouvelle forme de filiation pourrait devenir " concevable " parce qu'elle est pratiquée📜👶. Il est donc d'autant plus tentant de commencer à " concevoir " une nouvelle filiation, c'est-à-dire une filiation née d'une relation purement contractuelle. On le prétend en posant d'abord que puisque cela se fait, le droit doit l'admettre et le conceptualiser (positivisme sociologique) : si des choses " inconcevables " se pratiquent, alors il y aurait une sorte de devoir social du droit, par la législation ou la jurisprudence, de le " concevoir en intégrant les coutumes ". Les coutumes dicteraient les décrets. La loi ou le juge devrait alors "prendre acte" de ce qui est fait. C'est ce que demandaient ceux qui voulaient que les mineurs "consentant à des relations sexuelles" aient l'âge du consentement sexuel, puisque "cela se fait", en exigeant que la définition même de l'âge de la majorité soit changée. Ils n'ont pas obtenu gain de cause, car la nécessité de protéger les enfants a poursuivi, voire amplifié, l'affirmation qu'il est "inconcevable" de les confier à des adultes sous prétexte que c'est une pratique courante, qu'ils seraient d'accord et bien traités.

 

15. La catégorie des " pratiques inconcevables ", soit parce qu'elles n'ont " pas encore été conçues ", soit parce qu'elles sont " inadmissibles "📜👶 Par ailleurs, en matière de filiation, ce qui est nouveau, ce n'est pas tant qu'il existe des pratiques d'enfants sur mesure, des femmes disponibles à cet effet, des enfants dont la vie se déroule de manière heureuse, ayant donc commencé par un état civil obtenu par des processus divers et variés. Ce qui est nouveau, c'est la demande de reconnaissance juridique de cette pratique " inconcevable ", car elle heurte les fondements mêmes du système juridique français : le simple fait qu'elle soit pratiquée pourrait justifier sa reconnaissance par la loi📎!footnote-4617, ou le fait que la reconnaissance de ces pratiques pourrait limiter les dommages qu'elles causent 📎!footnote-4616.

 

16. Des pratiques qui ne sont "pas encore conçues" et qui nécessitent de nouvelles régulations : Les " nouvelles filiations " n'entrent pas dans cette catégorie, restant " inconcevables " car certaines, comme la gestation pour autrui, sont " inadmissibles " 📜 👶 Dans la catégorie des " pratiques inconcevables ", il faut distinguer les pratiques que le droit n'a pas sécurisées parce qu'il ne les a pas prises en considération : il s'agit des pratiques qui n'ont pas encore été conçues par le droit, comme les pratiques algorithmiques, pour lesquelles le système juridique doit trouver de nouvelles pratiques. Et les pratiques inconcevables parce qu'elles se heurtent à un principe fondamental de l'ordre juridique, en l'occurrence le fait qu'un enfant est un être humain et que la pratique des mères porteuses ne peut être reconnue comme établissant un nouveau type de filiation, renouvelant l'institution de la filiation : il s'agit donc plutôt d'une pratique "inconcevable" parce qu'elle est "inacceptable".

 

17. L'épreuve de la GPA : si on la rend juridiquement " admissible ", alors on aura nécessairement " conçu " la filiation par simple contrat📜👶 Or, la pratique de la filiation dite " nouvelle " et " inconcevable " dans ce second sens, c'est-à-dire la filiation " inadmissible ", parce qu'elle s'exerce sur le marché mondial des jeunes femmes qui portent biologiquement des enfants pour que les contrats de maternité de substitution entre agences et futurs parents puissent être exécutés, est devenue juridiquement " acceptable ". Il suffit qu'un jugement étranger obtienne l'exequatur pour que l'enfant né de ces deux désirs ait une filiation reconnue par le système juridique français.

 

18. La nouvelle filiation créée par contrat, objet d'un marché florissant📜👶 Afin de trouver une solution pratique à la situation des nouveau-nés vivant en France, puisqu'ils n'auront vécu à l'étranger que le temps d'y naître, l'arrêt du 14 novembre 2024 a donc validé la " parentalité contractuelle " d'un enfant. Cela était attendu depuis de nombreuses années par les organismes qui contrôlent le marché mondial des enfants à naître et des femmes disponibles pour les porter grâce à ce qui est devenu un lien non juridiquement requis : le lien biologique. Les économistes prendront acte de ce nouveau marché, peu soucieux de la structure fondamentale du système juridique. Les responsables de la RSE estimeront sans doute que c'est trop éloigné de leurs préoccupations. Le juge sera là pour veiller à ce qu'il n'y ait pas d'abus, ce qui ne fait que renforcer la légalité du principe même de la puissance contractuelle, qui n'exige qu'un projet d'enfant et une rencontre des esprits (l'agence et ceux qui veulent un enfant).

 

19. En rendant " admissible " la pratique " inconcevable " de la gestation pour autrui, le pouvoir contractuel met à mal la distinction entre les personnes et les choses📜👶 Lorsque les concepts changent, toutes les pratiques peuvent changer. Il suffit qu'une volonté rencontre une autre volonté et mobilise des ressources matérielles (en l'occurrence du matériel génétique, mais il peut aussi s'agir d'organes, etc.) pour réaliser l'objet du contrat, à savoir le lien de filiation entre l'enfant et l'une des parties au contrat. La pratique devient ainsi "concevable" pour le juge à travers l'intérêt supérieur de l'enfant, qui est en fait l'objet même du contrat proposé à tous ceux qui ont les moyens financiers de s'offrir un enfant, le lien de filiation étant l'accessoire nécessaire à l'accouchement du nouveau-né.

 

20. Le pouvoir contractuel de créer des filiations conçoit des espaces dits " privés " où tout est à sa disposition, l'État et les institutions étant tenus à distance, chargés de faire respecter les institutions contractuellement établies, la filiation n'en étant qu'un premier exemple📜👶 Dans un tel système régi par le contrat, les parties au contrat décident elles-mêmes de l'objet de leurs désirs et affirment à la fois l'autosuffisance de cette normativité contractuelle et le fait que la filiation relève de la vie privée, dans laquelle l'État n'a pas à s'immiscer. Ainsi, l'institution établie et maintenue par l'Etat est remplacée par un bouquet de droits subjectifs, ici le droit à l'enfant, là le droit à l'état civil, un ensemble de prérogatives individuelles que l'individu obtient de multiples façons et exige de l'Etat qu'il les mette en œuvre. L'État n'est alors plus la source ou le gardien, mais une sorte de débiteur de l'effectivité de droits subjectifs divers et variés, l'individu pouvant se retourner contre l'État s'il ne remplit pas ces nouveaux droits, quels que soient leur mode et leur lieu d'obtention📎!footnote-4624. L'imagination contractuelle peut donc établir autant de "nouvelles filiations" qu'il y a de projets à réaliser. Ainsi, par le pouvoir du contrat, instrument naturel du marché, les algorithmes peuvent être traités comme des personnes (ce qui est souvent avancé pour les robots conversationnels) et les êtres humains comme des fournisseurs de matières premières, leur corps étant la source première de ces matières.

 

21. Garder à l'esprit la perspective ouverte pour l'être humain d'une société mondiale régie par le contrat📜👶 Dans ce nouveau " concept ", le droit subjectif à l'enfant serait formalisé par un contrat proposé par des prestataires sur ce marché spécifique de la filiation, l'État n'intervenant pas et se contentant de constater les effets du contrat, c'est-à-dire de reconnaître le lien de filiation juridique ainsi établi au sein de son système juridique. Il s'agit d'un nouveau "concept", celui de la filiation par contrat pur et simple, qui a été soutenu par la première chambre civile de la Cour de cassation. Cette faculté contractuelle ferait disparaître l'ordre public (article 6 et article 16 du Code civil), l'administration et le juge ayant pour fonction de sécuriser les opérations de filiation.

 

22. Le rôle du juge se limite à sécuriser l'opération contractuelle et à en assurer l'équilibre📜👶 Cette " conception du droit à l'enfant ", satisfaite par le contrat et sécurisée par le juge, renvoie à une conception de la société dont le pilier contractuel suffirait à satisfaire les droits de ceux qui ont les moyens d'entrer dans la position privilégiée du contractant. Bien d'autres "innovations" peuvent découler d'une telle conception, en matière de mariage et de nom de famille.

 

23. Un nouveau pas vers une " société contractuelle " où des parties contractuelles puissantes pourraient créer les piliers institutionnels de la société📜👶 Parce que la distinction entre les personnes et les choses est également remise en cause par des entreprises qui prétendent que les algorithmes sont " intelligents ", " apprenants ", " créatifs ", etc. cette voie vers une société globale régie par des contrats pouvant disposer de la distinction entre les personnes et les choses, distinction construite pour protéger les êtres humains, les perspectives, notamment celles vécues et promues par les entreprises technologiques californiennes, nous invitent à garder à l'esprit que toutes les pratiques ne sont pas " concevables ". Si nous voulons que le droit reste un système conçu pour protéger les êtres humains en situation de faiblesse.

 

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8.  The person "is their body"📜👶 In such a legal system, every living human being is inseparable from their body: which is why blows to living human bodies constitute "assaults on the person", including assaults perpetrated on a person's body before birth. Because there is no distance between oneself and one's body, a person cannot rent out their body in whole or in part, cannot sell themselves in whole or in part, and cannot give themselves away in whole or in part.

 

9. All criminal law is based on the inseparability of the person and their body📜👶 One could conceive of a different system. A legal system, that is to say, a society in which, for example, human beings would be owners of themselves, or at least owners of their own bodies, and could transfer or rent them, etc., or even rent and appropriate the bodies of others. There are converging interests in this. But the humanist tradition of European law excludes it. The principle of the unavailability of the human body remains. Criminal law continues to uphold it, stating more than ever that the "consent of the victim" cannot justify assault and battery.

 

10. At the heart of the status of persons, filiation, a physical phenomenon, is primarily biological📜👶 This inseparability of the person and their body, which is part of the very definition of a human being as a person, has several major legal consequences. Firstly, filiation is biological!footnote-4623, linking the child to the woman from whose body it emerged. The State must rely on the reality of this biological link to establish it, with adoption itself establishing such a link and providing the child with one or two new parents. In surrogacy contracts, the woman who carries the child affirms, if another woman provides the egg, that she has no biological link with it, which contradicts epigenetic reality. However, in contracts concluded abroad, this woman, who is often not a co-contracting party, intervenes to secure the contractual relationship and affirm that she has no rights over the future child, that she has no parental plans and that if she were to have any rights, she waives them in advance.

 

11. In our legal system, where every human being is a person, the "right to a child", which forms the basis for the transfer of a human being, is therefore "inconceivable".📜👶  In our legal system, it is therefore impossible to "conceive" of a "right to a child". In fact, there is only a "right to" things or services. Because a child is a human being, a closed category corresponding to a specific definition, it cannot be the subject of a "right to", a real right, which allows, for example, the forced delivery of a child in accordance with the law, its rejection for non-compliance, its transfer, etc. This is not conceivable because in Europe human beings are not things.

 

12. The 'right to a child' is inconceivable at present, but we can always rethink the distinction between persons and things, replacing it with the normative power of contract📜👶  It is true that society and the legal system that underpins it can be conceived of differently. For example, in the law of the new states of the United States, it is accepted that a child can be conceived solely by the force of contract. There is no mother in the biological sense of the term. There is one or more "carriers of a child project" and a co-contractor capable of carrying out this project, i.e. an agency. In a global market of people who can provide the required services, such as egg donation, gamete donation and pregnancy, the agency chooses what will suit the project, and the execution of this contract will result in the birth of a child whose connection to the "intended parents" will most often be established by a judge. The service is remunerated, with the quality and suitability of the child depending on the requirements of the agency's co-contractors.

 

13. Until now, conceptual substitution in favour of the contract has been ruled out by society's rejection of a 'total market'📜👶 This concept has been rejected for the time being, except in black markets, or even illegal markets, where newborns are stolen to feed illicit networks. But for the time being, this activity is only developing, and very well, under the skies of a "total market" society!footnote-4618 where human beings can offer anything that has market value. For the time being, Europe and the French legal system refuse to see themselves as a "total market".

 

14. The assertion that a new parentage could become 'conceivable' because it is practised📜👶. This makes it all the more tempting to begin to "conceive" of new parentage, i.e. parentage born of a purely contractual relationship. This is claimed by first positing that since it is done, the law must admit and conceptualise it (sociological positivism): if "inconceivable" things are practised, then there would be a kind of social duty of the law, through legislation or case law, to "conceive it by integrating customs". Customs would dictate the decrees. The law or the judge would then have to 'acknowledge' what is done. This is what those who wanted minors 'consenting to sexual relations' to be given the age of sexual consent demanded, since 'it is done', requiring that the very definition of the age of majority be changed. They did not get their way, as the need to protect children continued, even increasing the assertion that it is "inconceivable" to hand them over to adults on the pretext that it is common practice, that they would agree and be well treated.

 

15. The category of "unthinkable practices", either because they are "not yet conceived" or because they are "unacceptable".📜👶 Furthermore, in terms of parentage, what is new is not so much that there are practices of custom-made children, women available for this purpose, children whose lives unfold happily, having thus begun with a civil status obtained through various and varied processes. What is new is the demand for legal recognition of this "inconceivable" practice, since it runs counter to the very foundations of the French legal system: the mere fact that it is practised could justify its recognition by the law!footnote-4617, or the fact that recognising these practices could limit the damage they cause!footnote-4616.

 

16. Practices that are "not yet conceived" and require new regulations: "new forms of parenthood" do not fall into this category, remaining "inconceivable" because some, such as surrogacy, are "unacceptable ."📜👶 In the category of "inconceivable practices", a distinction should be made between practices that the law has not secured because it has not taken them into consideration: these are practices that have not yet been conceived by the law, such as algorithmic practices, for which the legal system must find new practices. And practices that are inconceivable because they conflict with a basic principle of the legal system, in this case the fact that a child is a human being and that the practice of surrogacy cannot be recognised as establishing a new type of parentage, renewing the institution of parentage: this is therefore more of an "inconceivable" practice because it is "unacceptable".

 

17. The test of surrogacy: if we make it legally "acceptable", then we will necessarily have "conceived" parentage by simple contract📜👶 However, the practice of parentage that is said to be "new" and "inconceivable" in this second sense, i.e. "inadmissible" parentage, because it is practised on the global market for young women who biologically bear children so that surrogacy contracts between agencies and prospective parents can be fulfilled, has become legally "acceptable". All that is required is for a foreign judgment to obtain exequatur for the child born of these two desires to have a parentage recognised by the French legal system.

 

18. The new parentage created by contract, the subject of a thriving market📜👶   In order to find a practical solution to the situation of newborns living in France, as they will only have lived abroad for the time it took to be born there, the ruling of 14 November 2024 therefore validated the "contractual parenthood" of a child. This had been expected for many years by the agencies that control the global market for unborn children and women available to bear them through what has become a non-legally required link: the biological link. Economists will take note of this new market, having little regard for the fundamental structure of the legal system. CSR managers will no doubt consider that this is too far removed from their areas of concern. The judge will be there to ensure that there is no abuse, which only increases the legality of the very principle that is now contractual power, requiring only a plan to have a child and a meeting of minds (the agency and those who want a child).

 

19. By making the "unthinkable" practice of surrogacy "acceptable", contractual power undermines the distinction between persons and things📜👶  When concepts change, all practices can change. All that is needed is for one will to meet another and mobilise material resources (in this case, genetic material, but it could also involve organs, etc.) to achieve the object of the contract, which is the filiation link between the child and one of the parties to the contract. The practice thus becomes "conceivable" to the judge through the best interests of the child, who is, in fact, the very object of the contract offered to all those who have the financial means to afford a child, the filiation link being the necessary accessory that comes with the delivery of the newborn.

 

20. The contractual power to create filiations conceives of so-called "private" spaces where everything is at its disposal, with the State and institutions kept at a distance, required to uphold contractually established institutions, filiation being only a prime example📜👶 In such a contract-governed system, the parties to the contract make their own decisions about the object of their desires and assert both the self-sufficiency of this contractual normativity and the fact that parentage is a matter of privacy, in which the state has no business interfering. Thus, the institution established and maintained by the State is replaced by a bouquet of subjective rights, here the right to a child, there the right to a civil status, a florilegium of prerogatives that the individual obtains in multiple ways and whose realisation he will demand from the State. The State is then no longer the source or guardian, but a kind of debtor of the effectiveness of various and varied subjective rights, with the individual able to take action against the State if it does not fulfil these new rights, regardless of the methods and places where they are obtained!footnote-4624. Contractual imagination can thus establish as many "new filiations" as there are projects to be realised. Thus, through the power of the contract, a natural instrument of the market, algorithms can be treated as persons (this is often argued for conversational robots) and human beings as suppliers of raw materials, their bodies being the primary source of these materials.

 

21. Keeping in mind the open prospect for human beings of a contractually governed global society📜👶  In this new "concept", the subjective right to a child would be formalised through a contract offered by providers in this specific market of parentage, with the State not interfering and simply acknowledging the effects of the contract, i.e. recognising the legal parentage relationship thus established within its legal system. This is a new "concept", that of parentage by pure and simple contract, which has been endorsed by the First Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation. This contractual power would remove public policy (Article 6 and Article 16 of the Civil Code) from the equation, with the administration and the judge having the function of securing filiation transactions.

 

22. The judge's role is limited to securing the contractual transaction and ensuring its balance📜👶 This "concept of the right to a child", satisfied by the contract and secured by the judge, refers to a concept of society whose contractual pillar would suffice to satisfy the rights of those who have the means to enter into the privileged position of the contracting party. Many other "innovations" can arise from such a conception, in matters of marriage and family name.

 

23. A new step towards a 'contractual society' where powerful contractual parties could create the institutional pillars of society📜👶  Because the distinction between persons and things is also being challenged by companies that claim that algorithms are "intelligent", "learning", "creative", etc., this path towards a global society governed by contracts that can dispose of the distinction between persons and things, a distinction built to protect human beings, the perspectives, particularly those experienced and promoted by Californian technology companies, call for us to bear in mind that not every practice is "conceivable". If we want the law to remain a system designed to protect human beings in situations of weakness.

 

________

.

 

1. A "case-by-case" solution may implicitly alter the very conception of the legal concept being applied 📜👶 When judging a case, it is tempting not to give a definition, not to refer to a general concept (which we will then call a "theory", i.e. something that serves no purpose), to consider only the immediate effects of the solution to the difficulty of the situation under consideration, without worrying about (or at least without exposing) the broader consequences that a new solution developed for a particular case implies. Firstly, a so-called "pragmatic" presentation would silence those who take a more general view. Secondly, by restricting the scope of the discussion to a narrow circle that one has chosen oneself, namely the choice of a particular solution appropriate to the specific case in question, one would prohibit observations from a broader perspective.

 

2. The "pragmatic" solution of the 14 November 2024 ruling changed the very concept of parentage  📜👶  However, the case law of the First Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation, particularly in the ruling of 14 November 2024, which claims to offer only a practical solution to a specific case, namely a child born through surrogacy abroad whose filiation is recognised in relation to persons who desired his or her arrival without having any biological link with him or her, by admitting the validity of an exequatur judgment of the foreign judgment recognising such a link, has changed the concept of filiation. This is because it now implies that parentage originating from the will of the contracting parties, as recognised by a foreign court, is legally effective under French law.

 

3. One may agree or disagree with the conceptual change, but one cannot deny the magnitude of the change📜👶  One may agree or disagree, but at the very least, it must be said. Academics have said so. Indeed, beyond the destruction of Article 16 of the Civil Code, which, in the name of human dignity, prohibits surrogacy, it is the concept of filiation that has been changed by this section ruling. This decision brings two new developments. Firstly, Article 16 of the Civil Code no longer exists, which may upset those who refer to international public policy and believe that the prohibition of surrogacy is what protects women and children. Secondly, the creation by a section ruling of a new filiation link, namely filiation by contract, may upset those who believe that filiation is an institution that judges cannot create and, above all, that a contract is a legal instrument that cannot create filiation links. Or it could create anything. Others believe that this is, on the contrary, a very good thing, that it is progress, that contracts are our future and that they can create anything, shaping new institutions (in this case, a 'new filiation' at the behest of the parties), with parentage being only the beginning, as the contract can give rise to new concepts that must be incorporated into the legal system. It does not matter if the legal system is gradually overtaken, disappears and re-emerges with "new concepts", those that contracts will have conceived under the dictates of powerful contractors.

 

4.  At stake today: the advent of parentage established by simple contract 📜👶  This practical prospect is now firmly open. This is because the surrogacy contract gives concrete form to a "right to a child", a new concept that changes the legal system. It is from the perspective of this concept that we must first position ourselves, so that everyone can assess society and make their own choices. One might think that depending on whether we are those who provide the child (the agencies that have built the market), those who want children (the co-contractors, often misled by these agencies), those whom the law legally refers to as the mother and who provides the material service (she is contractually bound to say nothing) and the child (who by nature says nothing), we will choose the path created by the judge of a filiation that the contract engenders, or we will remain at the heart of our legal system: the summa divisio between the person and things.

 

5. The soundness of the concepts underpinning the legal system and the far-reaching legal consequences of any changes to them📜👶  The purpose of this article is therefore not to revisit in detail the case law of 14 November 2024, which has been examined elsewhere📎!footnote-4619. The purpose of this article is to emphasise the impact on a legal system of undermining the concept of parentage and, through this, the first of the pillars established by the legal system, namely the legal definition of human beings themselves. Indeed, before adopting or accepting new solutions📎!footnote-4620, we must bear in mind the legal system's current and potential conceptions of what a human being is, particularly what creates and anchors them in relation to what created them: parentage is therefore certainly a matter of feelings and family, but also a matter of politics and society of the highest order. This is also what the principle of the unavailability of persons refers to📎!footnote-4621. One cannot dispose of one's filiation because one cannot dispose of one's deep roots in a society. One may regret this and argue that everyone should have the autocratic power to create their own little society. This is currently supported by thinking in the United States. In Europe, there is no support for the idea that the social system can be blown up and abandoned by free and powerful individuals. The original concepts, which are based on the Social Contract, are different. The law must reflect this, particularly in the institution of parentage.

 

6. No legal system, Civil Law or Common Law, is devoid of fundamental concepts that form its backbone: Common Law, is devoid of fundamental concepts that form its backbone: the concept of filiation is one of them. The "right to a child" modifies it📜👶Indeed, the law is not just an accumulation of concrete solutions found to resolve particular difficulties. Whether in Civil Law or Common Law, it always forms a system based on principles, definitions and categories laid down by texts, case law and even contracts. For example, human beings fall under the legal category of persons. It follows from this concept that seizing a person is contrary to public order, as it amounts to treating them as an object. The evolution of solutions that, on a case-by-case basis, challenge this, leads us to recall this📎!footnote-4625.

 

7. The core of the French legal system: distinction and articulation between persons and things.📜👶The French legal system is built on the distinction between persons and things. This policy choice, established by Roman law!footnote-4626, has never been questioned. The category of persons is a closed category, responding to a definition, while the other category, that of things, is an open category. Thus, a person is a holder of rights and obligations (the "subject of law") while a thing is anything that is not a person. This gives rise to two types of rights: personal rights (which relate to persons), whose binding force is limited because the person must always be free (only a criminal court can deprive them of this freedom), and property rights (which relate to things), whose binding force is considerable because the holder of a property right can seize the thing, destroy it, etc. It is also established that every human being is a person from the moment of conception. These simple principles form the backbone of our legal system.

 

 

1. A "case-by-case" solution may implicitly alter the very conception of the legal concept being used  📜👶  When judging a case, it is tempting not to give a definition, not to refer to a general concept (which we will then call a 'theory', i.e. something that serves no purpose), and to consider only the immediate effects of the solution to the difficulty of the situation under consideration, without worrying about (or at least without exposing) the broader consequences that a new solution developed for a particular case may entail. Firstly, a so-called "pragmatic" presentation would silence those who take a more general view. Secondly, by restricting the scope of the discussion to a narrow circle that one has chosen oneself, namely the choice of a particular solution appropriate to the specific case under consideration, one would prohibit observations from a broader perspective.

 

2. The "pragmatic" solution of the 14 November 2024 ruling changed the very concept of parentage   📜👶  However, the case law of the First Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation, particularly in the ruling of 14 November 2024, which claims to offer only a practical solution to a specific case, namely a child born through surrogacy abroad whose filiation is recognised in relation to persons who desired his or her arrival without having any biological link to him or her, by admitting the validity of an exequatur judgment of the foreign judgment recognising such a link, has changed the concept of filiation. Since it now implies that parentage originating from the will of the contracting parties, as recognised by a foreign court, is legally effective under French law.

 

3. One may or may not agree with the conceptual change, but one cannot deny the magnitude of the change📜 👶 One may agree with it, one may not agree with it, but at the very least, one must say so. Academics have said so. Indeed, beyond the destruction of Article 16 of the Civil Code, which, in the name of human dignity, prohibits surrogacy, it is the concept of filiation that has been changed by this section ruling. This decision brings two new developments. Firstly, Article 16 of the Civil Code no longer exists, which may upset those who refer to international public policy and believe that the prohibition of surrogacy is what protects women and children. Secondly, the creation by a section ruling of a new filiation link, namely filiation by contract, may upset those who believe that filiation is an institution that judges cannot create and, above all, that a contract is a legal instrument that cannot create filiation links. Or it could create anything. Others believe that this is, on the contrary, a very good thing, that it is progress, that contracts are our future and that they can create anything, shaping new institutions (in this case, a 'new filiation' at the behest of the parties), with parentage being only the beginning, as the contract can give rise to new concepts that must be incorporated into the legal system. It does not matter if the legal system is gradually overtaken, disappears and re-emerges with "new concepts", those that contracts will have conceived, under the dictates of powerful contractors.

 

4. At stake today is the advent of parentage established purely and simply by contract. 📜 👶 This practical prospect is now firmly on the table. This is because the surrogacy contract gives concrete form to a "right to a child", a new concept that changes the legal system. It is from the perspective of this concept that we must first position ourselves, so that everyone can assess society and make their own choices. One might think that depending on whether we are those who provide the child (the agencies that have built the market), those who want children (the co-contractors, often misled by these agencies), those whom the law legally refers to as the mother and who provide the material service (she is contractually bound to say nothing) and the child (who by nature says nothing), we will choose the path created by the judge of a filiation that the contract engenders, or we will remain at the heart of our legal system: the summa divisio between the person and things.

 

5. Soundness of concepts, pillars of the legal system, and scope of the legal consequences of their modification📜👶  The purpose of this article is therefore not to revisit in detail the case law of 14 November 2024, which has been examined elsewhere!footnote-4619. The purpose of this article is to emphasise the impact on a legal system of undermining the concept of filiation and, through this, the first of the pillars established by the legal system, namely the legal definition of human beings themselves. Indeed, before adopting or accepting new solutions!footnote-4620, it is necessary to bear in mind the conceptions that the legal system has or may have of what a human being is, in particular what engenders and anchors them in relation to what engendered them: Filiation is therefore certainly a matter of feelings and family, but also of politics and social issues of the utmost importance. This is also what the principle of the unavailability of persons refers to!footnote-4621. One cannot dispose of one's filiation because one cannot dispose of one's deep roots in a society. One may regret this and argue that everyone should have the autocratic power to create their own little society. This view is currently supported by certain thinkers in the United States. In Europe, there is no support for the idea that the social system can be blown up and abandoned by free and powerful individuals. The original concepts, which are based on the Social Contract, are different. The law must reflect this, particularly in the institution of filiation.

 

6. No legal system, whether civil law or common law, is devoid of fundamental concepts that form its backbone: the concept of filiation is one such concept. The "right to a child" modifies it📜👶Indeed, the law is not just an accumulation of concrete solutions found to resolve particular difficulties. Whether in Civil Law or Common Law, it always forms a system based on principles, definitions and categories laid down by texts, case law and even contracts. For example, human beings fall under the legal category of persons. It follows from this concept that seizing a person is contrary to public order, as it amounts to treating them as a thing. The evolution of solutions that, on a case-by-case basis, challenge this, leads us to reiterate this point!footnote-4625.

 

7. The core of the French legal system: distinction and articulation between persons and things.📜👶The French legal system is built on the distinction between persons and things. This policy choice, established by Roman law!footnote-4626, has never been challenged. The category of persons is a closed category, responding to a definition, while the other category, that of things, is an open category. Thus, a person is a holder of rights and obligations (the "subject of law") while a thing is anything that is not a person. This gives rise to two types of rights: personal rights (which relate to persons), whose binding force is limited because the person must always be free (only a criminal court can deprive them of their freedom), and property rights (which relate to things), whose binding force is considerable because the holder of a property right can seize the thing, destroy it, etc. It is also established that every human being is a person from the moment of conception. These simple principles form the backbone of our legal system.

 

8. The person "is their body"📜👶  In such a legal system, every living human being is inseparable from their body: this is why blows to living human bodies constitute "assaults on the person", including assaults perpetrated on a person's body before birth. Because there is no distance between oneself and one's body, a person cannot rent out their body in whole or in part, cannot sell themselves in whole or in part, and cannot give themselves away in whole or in part.

 

9. All criminal law is based on the inseparability of the person and their body📜👶 One could conceive of a different system. A legal system, that is to say, a society in which, for example, human beings would be owners of themselves, or at least owners of their own bodies, and could transfer or rent them, etc., or even rent and appropriate the bodies of others. There are converging interests in this. But the humanist tradition of European law excludes it. The principle of the unavailability of the human body remains. Criminal law continues to uphold it, stating more than ever that the "consent of the victim" cannot justify assault and battery.

 

10. At the heart of the status of persons, filiation, a physical phenomenon, is primarily biological📜👶  This inseparability of the person and their body, which is part of the very definition of a human being as a person, has several major legal consequences. Firstly, filiation is biological!footnote-4623, linking the child to the woman from whose body it emerged. The State must rely on the reality of this biological link to establish it, with adoption itself establishing such a link and providing the child with one or two new parents. In surrogacy contracts, the woman who carries the child affirms, if another woman provides the egg, that she has no biological link with it, which contradicts epigenetic reality. However, in contracts concluded abroad, this woman, who is often not a co-contracting party, intervenes to secure the contractual relationship and affirm that she has no rights over the future child, that she has no parental plans and that if she were to have any rights, she waives them in advance.

 

11. In our legal system, where every human being is a person, the "right to a child", which forms the basis for the transfer of a human being, is therefore "inconceivable". 📜👶  In our legal system, it is therefore impossible to "conceive" of a "right to a child". In fact, there is only a "right to" things or services. Because a child is a human being, a closed category corresponding to a specific definition, it cannot be the subject of a "right to", a real right, which allows, for example, the forced delivery of a child in accordance with the law, its rejection for non-compliance, its transfer, etc. This is not conceivable because in Europe human beings are not things.

 

12. The "right to a child" is inconceivable at present, but we can always rethink the distinction between persons and things, replacing it with the normative power of contract📜👶  It is true that society and the legal system that underpins it can be conceived of differently. For example, in the law of the new states of the United States, it is accepted that a child can be conceived solely by the force of contract. There is no mother in the biological sense of the term. There is one or more "carriers of a child project" and a co-contractor capable of carrying out this project, i.e. an agency. In a global market of people who can provide the required services, such as egg donation, gamete donation and pregnancy, the agency chooses what will suit the project, and the execution of this contract will result in the birth of a child whose connection to the "intended parents" will most often be established by a judge. The service is remunerated, with the quality and suitability of the child depending on the requirements of the agency's co-contractors.

 

13. Until now, conceptual substitution in favour of the contract has been ruled out by society's rejection of a "total market". 📜👶 This concept has been rejected for the time being, except in black markets, or even illegal markets, where newborns are stolen to feed illicit networks. But for now, this activity is only developing, and very well, under the skies of a "total market" society!footnote-4618 where human beings can offer anything that has market value. For the time being, Europe and the French legal system refuse to conceive of themselves as a "total market".

 

14. The assertion that a new form of parentage could become "conceivable" because it is practised📜 👶. This makes it all the more tempting to begin to "conceive" of new parentage, i.e. parentage born of a purely contractual relationship. This is claimed by first positing that since it is done, the law must admit and conceptualise it (sociological positivism): if "inconceivable" things are practised, then there would be a kind of social duty of the law, through legislation or case law, to "conceive it by integrating customs". Customs would dictate the decrees. The law or the judge would then have to 'acknowledge' what is done. This is what those who wanted minors 'consenting to sexual relations' to be given the age of sexual consent demanded, since 'it is done', requiring that the very definition of the age of majority be changed. They did not get their way, as the need to protect children continued, even increasing, the assertion that it is "inconceivable" to hand them over to adults on the pretext that it is common practice, that they would agree and be well treated.

 

15. The category of "unthinkable practices", either because they have "not yet been conceived" or because they are "unacceptable". 📜👶 Furthermore, in terms of parentage, what is new is not so much that there are practices of custom-made children, women available for this purpose, children whose lives unfold happily, having thus begun with a civil status obtained through various and varied processes. What is new is the demand for legal recognition of this "inconceivable" practice, since it runs counter to the very foundations of the French legal system: the mere fact that it is practised could justify its recognition by the law!footnote-4617,  or the fact that recognising these practices could limit the damage they cause!footnote-4616.

 

16. Practices that are "not yet conceived" and require new regulations: "new forms of parenthood" do not fall into this category, remaining "inconceivable" because some, such as surrogacy, are "unacceptable". 📜 👶 In the category of "inconceivable practices", a distinction must be made between practices that the law has not secured because it has not taken them into consideration: these are practices that have not yet been conceived by the law, such as algorithmic practices, for which the legal system must find new practices. And practices that are inconceivable because they conflict with a basic principle of the legal system, in this case the fact that a child is a human being and that the practice of surrogacy cannot be recognised as establishing a new type of parentage, renewing the institution of parentage: this is therefore more of an "inconceivable" practice because it is "unacceptable".

 

17. The test of surrogacy: if we make it legally "acceptable", then we will necessarily have "conceived" parentage by simple contract📜👶 However, the practice of parentage that is said to be "new" and "inconceivable" in this second sense, i.e. "inadmissible" parentage, because it is practised on the global market for young women who biologically bear children so that surrogacy contracts between agencies and prospective parents can be fulfilled, has become legally "acceptable". All that is required is for a foreign judgment to obtain exequatur for the child born of these two desires to have a parentage recognised by the French legal system.

 

18. The new parentage created by contract, the subject of a thriving market📜👶    In order to find a practical solution to the situation of newborns living in France, as they will only have lived abroad for the time it took to be born there, the ruling of 14 November 2024 therefore validated the "contractual parenthood" of a child. This had been expected for many years by the agencies that control the global market for unborn children and women available to bear them through what has become a non-legally required link: the biological link. Economists will take note of this new market, having little regard for the fundamental structure of the legal system. CSR managers will no doubt consider that this is too far removed from their areas of concern. The judge will be there to ensure that there is no abuse, which only increases the legality of the very principle that is now contractual power, requiring only a plan to have a child and a meeting of minds (the agency and those who want a child).

 

19.  By making the "unthinkable" practice of surrogacy "acceptable", contractual power undermines the distinction between persons and things📜👶  When concepts change, all practices can change. All it takes is for one will to meet another will and mobilise material resources (in this case, genetic material, but it could also involve organs, etc.) to achieve the object of the contract, which is the filiation link between the child and one of the parties to the contract. The practice thus becomes "conceivable" to the judge through the best interests of the child, who is, in fact, the very object of the contract offered to all those who have the financial means to afford a child, the filiation link being the necessary accessory that comes with the delivery of the newborn.

 

20.& nbsp;The contractual power to create filiations conceives of so-called "private" spaces where everything is at its disposal, with the State and institutions kept at a distance, required to uphold contractually established institutions, filiation being only a prime example📜👶 In such a contract-governed system, the parties to the contract make their own decisions about the object of their desires and assert both the self-sufficiency of this contractual normativity and the fact that parentage is a matter of privacy, in which the State has no business interfering. Thus, the institution established and maintained by the State is replaced by a bouquet of subjective rights, here the right to a child, there the right to a civil status, a collection of individual prerogatives that the individual obtains in multiple ways and demands that the State implement. The state is then no longer the source or guardian, but a kind of debtor of the effectiveness of various and varied subjective rights, with the individual able to take action against the state if it does not fulfil these new rights, regardless of how and where they are obtained!footnote-4624. Contractual imagination can thus establish as many "new filiations" as there are projects to be realised. Thus, through the power of the contract, a natural instrument of the market, algorithms can be treated as persons (this is often argued for conversational robots) and human beings as suppliers of raw materials, their bodies being the primary source of these materials.

 

21. Keeping in mind the open prospect for human beings of a contractually governed global society📜 👶  In this new "concept", the subjective right to a child would be formalised through a contract offered by providers in this specific market of parentage, with the State not interfering and simply acknowledging the effects of the contract, i.e. recognising the legal parentage relationship thus established within its legal system. This is a new "concept", that of parentage by pure and simple contract, which has been supported by the First Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation. This contractual power would remove public policy (Article 6 and Article 16 of the Civil Code) from the equation, with the administration and the judge having the function of securing filiation transactions.

 

22. The judge's role is limited to securing the contractual transaction and ensuring its balance📜👶 This "concept of the right to a child", satisfied by the contract and secured by the judge, refers to a concept of society whose contractual pillar would suffice to satisfy the rights of those who have the means to enter into the privileged position of the contracting party. Many other "innovations" can arise from such a conception, in matters of marriage and family name.

 

23. A new step towards a "contractual society" where powerful contractual parties could create the institutional pillars of society📜 👶  Because the distinction between persons and things is also being challenged by companies that claim that algorithms are "intelligent", "learning", "creative", etc., this path towards a global society governed by contracts that can dispose of the distinction between persons and things, a distinction built to protect human beings, the perspectives, particularly those experienced and promoted by Californian technology companies, call for us to bear in mind that not every practice is "conceivable". If we want the law to remain a system designed to protect human beings in situations of weakness.

 

________

.

8.  The person "is his or her body"📜👶 In such a legal system, every living human being is inseparable from his or her body: which is why blows to living human bodies constitute "assaults on the person", including assaults perpetrated on a person's body before birth. Because there is no distance between oneself and one's body, a person cannot rent out their body in whole or in part, cannot sell themselves in whole or in part, and cannot give themselves away in whole or in part.

 

9. All criminal law is based on the inseparability of the person and their body📜👶  One could conceive of a different system. A legal system, that is to say, a society in which, for example, human beings would be owners of themselves, or at least owners of their own bodies, and could transfer or rent them, etc., or even rent and appropriate the bodies of others. There are converging interests in this. But the humanist tradition of European law excludes it. The principle of the unavailability of the human body remains. Criminal law continues to uphold it, stating more than ever that the "consent of the victim" cannot justify assault and battery.

 

10. At the heart of the status of persons, filiation, a physical phenomenon, is primarily biological📜👶 This inseparability of the person and their body, which is part of the very definition of a human being as a person, has several major legal consequences. First of all, filiation is biological!footnote-4623, linking the child to the woman from whose body it emerged. The State must rely on the reality of this biological link to establish it, with adoption itself establishing such a link and providing the child with one or two new parents. In surrogacy contracts, the woman who carries the child affirms, if another woman provides the egg, that she has no biological link with it, which contradicts epigenetic reality. However, in contracts concluded abroad, this woman, who is often not a co-contracting party, intervenes to secure the contractual relationship and affirm that she has no rights over the future child, that she has no parental plans and that if she were to have any rights, she waives them in advance.

 

11. In our legal system, where every human being is a person, the "right to a child", which forms the basis for the transfer of a human being, is therefore "inconceivable". 📜👶 In our legal system, it is therefore impossible to "conceive" of a "right to a child". In fact, there is only a "right to" things or services. Because a child is a human being, a closed category corresponding to a specific definition, it cannot be the subject of a "right to", a real right, which allows, for example, the forced delivery of a child in accordance with the law, its rejection for non-compliance, its transfer, etc. This is not conceivable because in Europe human beings are not things.

 

12. The "right to a child" is inconceivable at present, but we can always rethink the distinction between persons and things, replacing it with the normative power of contract📜👶 It is true that society and the legal system that underpins it can be conceived of differently. For example, in the law of the new states of the United States, it is accepted that a child can be conceived solely by contract. There is no mother in the biological sense of the term. There is one or more "carriers of a child project" and a co-contractor capable of carrying out this project, i.e. an agency. In a global market of people who can provide the required services, such as egg donation, gamete donation and pregnancy, the agency chooses what will best suit the project, and the execution of this contract will result in the birth of a child whose connection to the "intended parents" will most often be established by a judge. The service is remunerated, with the quality and suitability of the child depending on the requirements of the agency's co-contractors.

 

13. Until now, conceptual substitution in favour of the contract has been ruled out by society's rejection of a 'total market'📜👶 This concept has been rejected for the time being, except in black markets, or even illegal markets, where newborns are stolen to feed illicit networks. But for the time being, this activity is only developing, and very well, under the skies of a "total market" society!footnote-4618 where human beings can offer anything that has market value. For the time being, Europe and the French legal system refuse to see themselves as a "total market".

 

14. The assertion that a new form of parenthood could become "conceivable" because it is practised📜👶 . This makes it all the more tempting to begin to "conceive" of new parentage, i.e. parentage born of a purely contractual relationship. This is claimed by first positing that since it is done, the law must admit and conceptualise it (sociological positivism): if "inconceivable" things are practised, then there would be a kind of social duty of the law, through legislation or case law, to "conceive it by integrating customs". Customs would dictate the decrees. The law or the judge would then have to 'recognise' what is done. This is what those who wanted minors 'consenting to sexual relations' to be given the age of sexual consent demanded, since 'it is done', requiring that the very definition of the age of majority be changed. They did not get their way, as the need to protect children continued, even increasing, the assertion that it is "inconceivable" to hand them over to adults on the pretext that it is common practice, that they would agree and be well treated.

 

15. The category of "unthinkable practices", either because they are "not yet conceived" or because they are "unacceptable". 📜👶Furthermore, in terms of parentage, what is new is not so much that there are practices of custom-made children, women available for this purpose, children whose lives unfold happily, having thus begun with a civil status obtained through various and varied processes. What is new is the demand for legal recognition of this "inconceivable" practice, since it runs counter to the very foundations of the French legal system: the mere fact that it is practised could justify its recognition by the law!footnote-4617,  or the fact that recognising these practices could limit the damage they cause!footnote-4616.

 

16. Practices that are "not yet conceived" requiring new regulations: "new forms of parenthood" do not fall into this category, remaining "unthinkable" because some, such as surrogacy, are "unacceptable".  In the category of "inconceivable practices", a distinction must be made between practices that the law has not secured because it has not taken them into consideration: these are practices that have not yet been conceived by the law, such as algorithmic practices, for which the legal system must find new practices. And practices that are inconceivable because they conflict with a basic principle of the legal system, in this case the fact that a child is a human being and that the practice of surrogacy cannot be recognised as establishing a new type of parentage, renewing the institution of parentage: this is therefore more of an "inconceivable" practice because it is "unacceptable".

 

17.  The test of surrogacy: if we make it legally "admissible", then we will necessarily have "conceived" parentage by simple contract📜👶 However, the practice of parentage that is said to be "new" and "inconceivable" in this second sense, i.e. "inadmissible" parentage, because it is practised on the global market for young women who biologically bear children so that surrogacy contracts between agencies and prospective parents can be fulfilled, has become legally "admissible". All that is required is for a foreign judgment to obtain exequatur for the child born of these two desires to have a parentage recognised by the French legal system.

 

18. The new parentage created by contract, the subject of a thriving market📜👶   In order to find a practical solution to the situation of newborns living in France, as they will only have lived abroad for the time it took to be born there, the ruling of 14 November 2024 therefore validated the "contractual parenthood" of a child. This had been expected for many years by the agencies that control the global market for unborn children and women available to bear them through what has become a non-legally required link: the biological link. Economists will take note of this new market, having little regard for the fundamental structure of the legal system. CSR managers will no doubt consider that this is too far removed from their areas of concern. The judge will be there to ensure that there is no abuse, which only increases the legality of the very principle that is now contractual power, requiring only a plan to have a child and a meeting of minds (the agency and those who want a child).

 

19. By making the "unthinkable" practice of surrogacy "acceptable", contractual power undermines the distinction between persons and things📜👶  When concepts change, all practices can change. All it takes is for one will to meet another will and mobilise material resources (in this case, genetic material, but it could also involve organs, etc.) to achieve the object of the contract, which is the parent-child relationship between the child and one of the parties to the contract. The practice thus becomes "conceivable" to the judge through the best interests of the child, who is, in fact, the very object of the contract offered to all those who have the financial means to afford a child, the filiation link being the necessary accessory that comes with the delivery of the newborn.

 

20. The contractual power to create filiations conceives of so-called "private" spaces where everything is at its disposal, with the State and institutions kept at a distance, required to uphold contractually established institutions, filiation being only the first example📜👶 In such a contract-governed system, the parties to the contract make their own decisions about the object of their desires and assert both the self-sufficiency of this contractual normativity and the fact that parentage is a matter of privacy, in which the State has no business interfering. Thus, the institution established and maintained by the state is replaced by a bouquet of subjective rights, here the right to a child, there the right to a civil status, a collection of individual prerogatives that the individual obtains in multiple ways and demands that the state implement. The State is then no longer the source or guardian, but a kind of debtor of the effectiveness of various and varied subjective rights, with individuals able to take action against the state if these new rights are not fulfilled, regardless of how and where they are obtained. Contractual imagination can thus establish as many "new relationships" as there are projects to be realised. Thus, through the power of the contract, a natural instrument of the market, algorithms can be treated as persons (this is often argued for conversational robots) and human beings as suppliers of raw materials, their bodies being the primary source of these materials.

 

21. Keeping in mind the prospect open to human beings of a contractually governed global society📜👶  In this new "concept", the subjective right to a child would be formalised through a contract offered by providers in this specific market of parentage, with the State not interfering and simply acknowledging the effects of the contract, i.e. recognising the legal parentage relationship thus established within its legal system. This new "concept" of parentage by contract alone has been endorsed by the First Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation. This contractual power would remove public policy (Article 6 and Article 16 of the Civil Code) from the equation, with the administration and the judge having the function of securing filiation transactions.

 

22. The judge's role is limited to securing the contractual transaction and ensuring its balance📜👶 This "concept of the right to a child", satisfied by the contract and secured by the judge, refers to a concept of society whose contractual pillar would suffice to satisfy the rights of those who have the means to enter into the privileged position of the contracting party. Many other "innovations" can emerge from such a conception, in matters of marriage and family name.

 

23. A new step towards a 'contractual society' where powerful contractual parties could create the institutional pillars of society📜👶  Because the distinction between persons and things is also being attacked by companies that claim that algorithms are "intelligent", "learning", "creative", etc., this path towards a global society governed by contracts that can dispose of the distinction between persons and things, a distinction built to protect human beings, the perspectives, particularly those experienced and promoted by Californian technology companies, call for us to bear in mind that not every practice is "conceivable". If we want the law to remain a system designed to protect human beings in situations of weakness.

 

________

.

rable from their body: this is why blows to living human bodies constitute "assaults on the person", including assaults perpetrated on a person's body before birth. Because there is no distance between oneself and one's body, a person cannot rent out their body in whole or in part, cannot sell themselves in whole or in part, and cannot give themselves away in whole or in part.

 

9. All criminal law is based on the inseparability of the person and their body📜👶 One could conceive of a different system. A legal system, that is to say, a society in which, for example, human beings would be owners of themselves, or at least owners of their own bodies, and could transfer or rent them, etc., or even rent and appropriate the bodies of others. There are converging interests in this. But the humanist tradition of European law excludes it. The principle of the unavailability of the human body remains. Criminal law continues to uphold it, stating more than ever that the "consent of the victim" cannot justify assault and battery.

 

10. At the heart of the status of persons, filiation, a physical phenomenon, is primarily biological📜👶 This inseparability of the person and their body, which is part of the very definition of a human being as a person, has several major legal consequences. Firstly, filiation is biological!footnote-4623, linking the child to the woman from whose body it emerged. The State must rely on the reality of this biological link to establish it, with adoption itself establishing such a link and providing the child with one or two new parents. In surrogacy contracts, the woman who carries the child affirms, if another woman provides the egg, that she has no biological link with it, which contradicts epigenetic reality. However, in contracts concluded abroad, this woman, who is often not a co-contracting party, intervenes to secure the contractual relationship and affirm that she has no rights over the future child, that she has no parental plans and that if she were to have any rights, she waives them in advance.

 

11. In our legal system, where every human being is a person, the "right to a child", which forms the basis for the transfer of a human being, is therefore "inconceivable".📜👶  In our legal system, it is therefore impossible to "conceive" of a "right to a child". In fact, there is only a "right to" things or services. Because a child is a human being, a closed category corresponding to a specific definition, it cannot be the subject of a "right to", a real right, which allows, for example, the forced delivery of a child in accordance with the law, its rejection for non-compliance, its transfer, etc. This is not conceivable because in Europe human beings are not things.

 

12. The "right to a child" is inconceivable at present, but we can always rethink the distinction between persons and things, replacing it with the normative power of contract📜👶  It is true that society and the legal system that underpins it can be conceived of differently. For example, in the law of the new states of the United States, it is accepted that a child can be conceived solely by the force of contract. There is no mother in the biological sense of the term. There is one or more "carriers of a child project" and a co-contractor capable of carrying out this project, i.e. an agency. In a global market of people who can provide the required services, such as egg donation, gamete donation and pregnancy, the agency chooses what will suit the project, and the execution of this contract will result in the birth of a child whose connection to the "intended parents" will most often be established by a judge. The service is remunerated, with the quality and suitability of the child depending on the requirements of the agency's co-contractors.

 

13. Until now, conceptual substitution in favour of the contract has been ruled out by society's rejection of a "total market".📜👶 This concept has been rejected for the time being, except in black markets, or even illegal markets, where newborns are stolen to feed illicit networks. But for now, this activity is only developing, and very well, under the skies of a "total market" society!footnote-4618 where human beings can offer anything that has market value. For the time being, Europe and the French legal system refuse to conceive of themselves as a "total market".

 

14. The assertion that a new form of parentage could become "conceivable" because it is practised📜👶. This makes it all the more tempting to begin to "conceive" of new parentage, i.e. parentage born of a purely contractual relationship. This is claimed by first positing that since it is done, the law must admit and conceptualise it (sociological positivism): if "inconceivable" things are practised, then there would be a kind of social duty of the law, through legislation or case law, to "conceive it by integrating customs". Customs would dictate the decrees. The law or the judge would then have to 'acknowledge' what is done. This is what those who wanted minors 'consenting to sexual relations' to be given the age of sexual consent demanded, since 'it is done', requiring that the very definition of the age of majority be changed. They did not get their way, as the need to protect children continued, even increasing, the assertion that it is "inconceivable" to hand them over to adults on the pretext that it is common practice, that they would agree and be well treated.

 

15. The category of "unthinkable practices", either because they have "not yet been conceived" or because they are "unacceptable".📜👶 Furthermore, in terms of parentage, what is new is not so much that there are practices of custom-made children, women available for this purpose, children whose lives unfold happily, having thus begun with a civil status obtained through various and varied processes. What is new is the demand for legal recognition of this "inconceivable" practice, since it runs counter to the very foundations of the French legal system: the mere fact that it is practised could justify its recognition by the law!footnote-4617, or the fact that recognising these practices could limit the damage they cause!footnote-4616.

 

16. Practices that are "not yet conceived" and require new regulations: "new forms of parenthood" do not fall into this category, remaining "inconceivable" because some, such as surrogacy, are "unacceptable". 📜👶 In the category of "inconceivable practices", a distinction must be made between practices that the law has not secured because it has not taken them into consideration: these are practices that have not yet been conceived by the law, such as algorithmic practices, for which the legal system must find new practices. And practices that are inconceivable because they conflict with a basic principle of the legal system, in this case the fact that a child is a human being and that the practice of surrogacy cannot be recognised as establishing a new type of parentage, renewing the institution of parentage: this is therefore more of an "inconceivable" practice because it is "unacceptable".

 

17. The test of surrogacy: if we make it legally "acceptable", then we will necessarily have "conceived" parentage by simple contract📜👶 However, the practice of parentage that is said to be "new" and "inconceivable" in this second sense, i.e. "inadmissible" parentage, because it is practised on the global market for young women who biologically bear children so that surrogacy contracts between agencies and prospective parents can be fulfilled, has become legally "acceptable". All that is required is for a foreign judgment to obtain exequatur for the child born of these two desires to have a parentage recognised by the French legal system.

 

18. The new parentage created by contract, the subject of a thriving market📜👶   In order to find a practical solution to the situation of newborns living in France, as they will only have lived abroad for the time it took to be born there, the ruling of 14 November 2024 therefore validated the "contractual parenthood" of a child. This had been expected for many years by the agencies that control the global market for unborn children and women available to bear them through what has become a non-legally required link: the biological link. Economists will take note of this new market, having little regard for the fundamental structure of the legal system. CSR managers will no doubt consider that this is too far removed from their areas of concern. The judge will be there to ensure that there is no abuse, which only increases the legality of the very principle that is now contractual power, requiring only a plan to have a child and a meeting of minds (the agency and those who want a child).

 

19. By making the "unthinkable" practice of surrogacy "acceptable", contractual power undermines the distinction between persons and things📜👶  When concepts change, all practices can change. All it takes is for one will to meet another will and mobilise material resources (in this case, genetic material, but it could also involve organs, etc.) to achieve the object of the contract, which is the filiation link between the child and one of the parties to the contract. The practice thus becomes "conceivable" to the judge through the best interests of the child, who is, in fact, the very object of the contract offered to all those who have the financial means to afford a child, the filiation link being the necessary accessory that comes with the delivery of the newborn.

 

20. The contractual power to create filiations conceives of so-called "private" spaces where everything is at its disposal, with the State and institutions kept at a distance, required to uphold contractually established institutions, filiation being only a prime example📜👶 In such a contract-governed system, the parties to the contract make their own decisions about the object of their desires and assert both the self-sufficiency of this contractual normativity and the fact that parentage is a matter of privacy, in which the State has no business interfering. Thus, the institution established and maintained by the State is replaced by a bouquet of subjective rights, here the right to a child, there the right to a civil status, a collection of individual prerogatives that the individual obtains in multiple ways and demands that the State implement. The state is then no longer the source or guardian, but a kind of debtor of the effectiveness of various and varied subjective rights, with the individual able to take action against the state if it does not fulfil these new rights, regardless of how and where they are obtained!footnote-4624. Contractual imagination can thus establish as many "new filiations" as there are projects to be realised. Thus, through the power of the contract, a natural instrument of the market, algorithms can be treated as persons (this is often argued for conversational robots) and human beings as suppliers of raw materials, their bodies being the primary source of these materials.

 

21. Keeping in mind the open prospect for human beings of a contractually governed global society📜👶  In this new "concept", the subjective right to a child would be formalised through a contract offered by providers in this specific market of parentage, with the State not interfering and simply acknowledging the effects of the contract, i.e. recognising the legal parentage relationship thus established within its legal system. This is a new "concept", that of parentage by pure and simple contract, which has been supported by the First Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation. This contractual power would remove public policy (Article 6 and Article 16 of the Civil Code) from the equation, with the administration and the judge having the function of securing filiation transactions.

 

22. The judge's role is limited to securing the contractual transaction and ensuring its balance📜👶 This "concept of the right to a child", satisfied by the contract and secured by the judge, refers to a concept of society whose contractual pillar would suffice to satisfy the rights of those who have the means to enter into the privileged position of the contracting party. Many other "innovations" can arise from such a conception, in matters of marriage and family name.

 

23. A new step towards a "contractual society" where powerful contractual parties could create the institutional pillars of society📜👶  Because the distinction between persons and things is also being challenged by companies that claim that algorithms are "intelligent", "learning", "creative", etc., this path towards a global society governed by contracts that can dispose of the distinction between persons and things, a distinction built to protect human beings, the perspectives, particularly those experienced and promoted by Californian technology companies, call for us to bear in mind that not every practice is "conceivable". If we want the law to remain a system designed to protect human beings in situations of weakness.

 

________

.

8. La personne « est son corps »📜👶 Dans un tel système juridique, tout être humain vivant est indissociable de son corps : c’est pourquoi les coups portés à des corps humains vivants relèvent des « atteintes à la personne », y compris les atteintes perpétuées sur le corps d’une personne avant sa naissance. Parce qu’il n’y a pas de distance entre soi et son corps, la personne ne peut pas louer son corps en tout ou partie, ne peut pas se vendre en tout ou partie, ne peut se céder à titre gracieux en tout ou partie.

 

9. Tout le droit pénal repose sur l’indissociabilité de la personne et de son corps📜👶 L’on pourrait concevoir un système différent. Un système juridique, c’est-à-dire une société, dans lequel par exemple les personnes humaines seraient propriétaires d’elles-mêmes, à tout le moins propriétaires de leur propre corps et pourraient le céder, le louer, etc., voire louer et s’approprier les corps des autres. Il y a des intérêts convergents pour cela. Mais la tradition humaniste du droit européen l’exclut. Le principe d’indisponibilité du corps humain demeure. Le Droit pénal continue de le garder, en posant plus que jamais que le « consentement de la victime » ne saurait justifier les coups et blessures.

 

10. Au cœur de l’état des personnes, la filiation, phénomène corporel, est d’abord biologique📜👶 Cette indissociabilité de la personne et de son corps, qui est dans la définition même de l’être humain comme personne, a plusieurs conséquences juridiques majeures. Tout d’abord la filiation est biologique!footnote-4623, rattachant l’enfant à la femme du corps duquel il est sorti. L’État doit s’appuyer sur la réalité de ce lien biologique pour le constater, l’adoption constatant elle-même un tel lien et offrant à l’enfant un ou deux nouveaux parents. Dans les contrats de GPA la femme qui porte l’enfant affirme, si une autre femme fournit l’ovocyte, n’avoir aucun lien biologique avec elle, ce qui contredit la réalité épigénétique. Mais dans les contrats conclus à l’étranger, cette femme, n’étant souvent pas cocontractante, y intervient pour sécuriser la relation contractuelle et affirmer qu’elle n’a aucun droit sur l’enfant à venir, qu’elle n’a aucun projet parental et que si elle devait avoir des droits, elle les abandonne par avance.

 

11. Dans notre système juridique où tout être humain est une personne, le « droit à l’enfant », fondant une cession dont un être humain est l’objet, est donc « inconcevable »📜👶 Dans notre système juridique, l’on ne peut donc pas « concevoir » un « droit à l’enfant. En effet, il n’y a de « droit à » que sur des choses ou des prestations. Parce que l’enfant est un être humain, catégorie fermée correspondant à une définition propre, il ne peut pas faire l’objet d’un « droit à », droit réel, qui permet par exemple d’obtenir d’une façon forcée sa délivrance conforme, son rejet pour non-conformité, sa cession, etc.  Cela n’est pas concevable parce qu’en Europe les êtres humains ne sont pas des choses.

 

12. Le « droit à l’enfant » est pour l’instant inconcevable mais l’on peut toujours repenser la distinction entre la personne et les choses, en y substituant la puissance normative du contrat📜👶 Il est vrai que l’on peut concevoir la société et le système juridique qui en constitue l’ossature différemment. Par exemple, dans le Droit de nouveaux États des Etats-Unis, il est acquis que l’on peut engendrer un enfant par la seule force du contrat. Il n’y a pas de mère, au sens biologique du terme. Il y a un ou des « porteurs d’un projet d’enfant » et un cocontractant apte à réaliser ce projet, c’est-à-dire une agence. Dans un marché mondial disponible de personnes pouvant fournir les prestations requises, fourniture d’ovocyte, fourniture de gamète, fourniture de grossesse, l’agence choisit ce qui va correspondre au projet et de l’exécution de ce contrat naîtra l’enfant dont le rattachement aux « parents d’intention » sera opéré le plus souvent par un juge. La prestation est rémunérée, la qualité et l’adéquation de l’enfant dépendant du degré d’exigence des cocontractants de l’agence.

 

13. Jusqu’ici la substitution conceptuelle au profit du contrat a été exclue par refus d’une société du « marché total »📜👶 Cette conception a été pour l’instant rejetée,  en dehors des marchés noirs, voire illicites, où l’on vole les nouveau-nés pour alimenter des réseaux illicites. Mais pour l’instant  cette activité ne se développe, et très bien, que sous des cieux d’une société de « marché total »!footnote-4618 où les êtres humains peuvent offrir tout ce qui peut représenter une valeur marchande. Pour l’instant, l’Europe et le système juridique français refusent de se concevoir comme un « marché total ».

 

14. L’affirmation selon laquelle une nouvelle filiation pourrait devenir « concevable » du fait qu’elle est pratiquée📜👶. L’on en est d’autant plus tenté de commencer à « concevoir » la nouvelle filiation, c’est-à-dire la filiation née d’un pur contrat. L’on le prétend en posant tout d’abord que puisque cela se fait le Droit doit l’admettre et le conceptualiser (positivisme sociologique) : si des choses « inconcevables » se pratiquent, il y aurait alors comme une sorte de devoir social du Droit, par la loi ou la jurisprudence, de le « concevoir par intégration des mœurs ». Les mœurs feraient les décrets. Il faudrait alors que la loi ou le juge « donne acte » à ce qui se fait. C’est ce que demandaient ceux qui voulaient que soit donné la majorité sexuelle aux mineurs « consentant à des relations sexuelles, puisque «cela se fait », exigeant que l’on change la définition même de la majorité. Ils n’ont pas obtenu satisfaction, la nécessité de protéger les enfants continuant, voire accroissant, l’affirmation qu’il est « inconcevable » de les livrer à des adultes sous prétexte que cela se pratique, qu’ils seraient d’accord et seraient bien traités.

 

15. La catégorie des « pratiques inconcevables » soit parce qu’elles ne sont « pas encore conçues » soit parce qu’elles sont « inadmissibles »📜👶En outre, en matière de filiation, ce qui est nouveau, ce n’est pas tant qu’il y ait des pratiques de fabrication sur mesure d’enfants, des femmes disponibles pour cela, des enfants dont la vie se déroule d’une façon heureuse en ayant ainsi débuté avec un état-civil obtenu à partir de procédés divers et variés. Ce qui est nouveau, c’est la revendication de la reconnaissance par le système juridique de cette pratique « inconcevable » puisque contraire au socle même du système juridique français : le seul fait que cela se pratique pouvant justifier que le Droit le reconnaisse!footnote-4617, ou le fait qu’en reconnaissant ces pratiques l’on pourrait ainsi en limiter les dégâts!footnote-4616.

 

16. Les pratiques « non encore conçues » appelant des régulations nouvelles : les « nouvelles filiations » n’en relèvent pas, demeurant « inconcevables » parce que certaines, comme la GPA, sont « inadmissibles »📜👶 Dans la catégorie des « pratiques inconcevables », il convient de faire une distinction entre les pratiques que le Droit n’a pas sécurisé parce qu’il ne les a pas prises en considération : il s’agit alors davantage d’une pratique « non encore conçue » par le Droit, comme le sont par exemple des pratiques algorithmiques et pour lesquelles le système juridique doit trouver de nouvelles pratiques. Et les pratiques inconcevables parce qu’elles se heurtent à un principe de base du système juridique, ici le fait que l’enfant est un être humain et que la pratique de la GPA ne peut pas être reconnue comme fondant une filiation d’un type nouveau, renouvelant l’institution qu’est la filiation : il s’agit alors davantage d’une pratique « inconcevable » parce qu’elle est « inadmissible ».  

 

17. L’épreuve de la GPA : si on la rend juridiquement « admissible », alors on aura nécessairement « conçu » la filiation par simple contrat📜👶 Or, la pratique de la filiation que l’on dit « nouvelle » et qui est « inconcevable » à ce second titre, c’est-à-dire la filiation « inadmissible », parce qu’elle se pratique sur le marché mondial des jeunes femmes qui engendrent biologiquement des enfants pour que les contrats de GPA noués entre les agences et les porteurs de projet d’enfant puissent être exécutés, est devenu juridiquement « admissible ». Il faut mais il suffit qu’un jugement étranger obtienne l’exequatur pour que l’enfant issu de ces deux volontés ait une filiation reconnue par le système juridique français.

 

18. La nouvelle filiation engendrée par contrat, objet d’un marché florissant📜👶  Pour trouver une solution pratique à la situation dans laquelle est le nouveau-né qui vit en France, car il n’aura vécu à l’étranger que le temps d’y naître, l’arrêt du 14 novembre 2024 a donc validé « l’engendrement par contrat » d’un enfant. C’était attendu depuis de nombreuses années par les agences qui tiennent le marché mondial des enfants à naître et des femmes disponibles pour les engendrer par ce qui est devenu un lien non juridiquement requis : le lien biologique. Les économistes prendront acte de ce nouveau marché, n’ayant que peu de considération pour l’ossature fondamentale du système juridique. Les responsables de RSE estimeront sans doute que cela est trop loin de leurs sujets de vigilance. Le juge sera là pour s’assurer qu’il n’y a pas d’abus, ce qui ne fait qu’accroître la licéité du principe même qu’est désormais le pouvoir contractuel qui n’a besoin que d’un projet d’enfant, et d’une rencontre de volontés (l’agence et ceux qui veulent un enfant).

 

19. En rendant « admissible » la pratique « inconcevable » de la GPA, le pouvoir contractuel s’attaque à la distinction des personnes et des choses📜👶 Quand on change les concepts, toutes les pratiques peuvent changer. Il suffit qu’il y ait une volonté qui rencontre une autre volonté et mobilise des moyens matériels (ici, il s’agit de matériel génétique, mais cela peut concerner aussi les organes, etc.) pour réaliser l’objet du contrat qui est le lien de filiation entre l’enfant et une des parties au contrat. La pratique devient ainsi « concevable » par le juge à travers l’intérêt supérieur de cet enfant qui, de fait, est l’objet même du contrat qui est proposé à tous ceux qui ont les moyens financiers de s’offrir un enfant, le lien de filiation étant l’accessoire nécessaire qui vient avec la délivrance du nouveau-né.

 

20. Le pouvoir contractuel d’engendrer des filiations conçoit des espaces dit « privés » où tout est à sa main, l’État et les institutions tenus à distance devant recueillir les institutions contractuellement élaborées, la filiation n’étant qu’un premier exemple📜👶 Dans un tel système gouverné par le contrat, les parties au contrat font leur affaire de l’objet de leurs volontés, et affirment à la fois l’autarcie de cette normativité contractuelle, la filiation relevant alors du droit à la vie privée, dont l’État ne saurait se mêler!footnote-4622. Ainsi l’institution établie et gardée par l’Etat est remplacée par un bouquet de droits subjectifs, ici le droit à l’enfant, là le droit à un état civil, florilège de prérogatives de l’individu qu’il obtient de multiples façons et dont il exigera de l’Etat la concrétisation. L’Etat n’est plus alors ni source ni gardien mais une sorte de débiteur d’effectivité de droits subjectifs divers et variés, l’individu pouvant se retourner contre l’Etat s’il n’est pas rempli de ce qui seraient ces nouveaux droits, peu importe les modes et les lieux d’obtention de ceux-ci!footnote-4624 L’imagination contractuelle peut ainsi instaurer autant de « nouvelles filiations » qu’il y a de projets à concrétiser. C’est ainsi que par la puissance du contrat, instrument naturel du marché, les algorithmes pourront être traités comme des personnes (cela est souvent soutenu pour les robots conversationnels) et les êtres humains comme des fournisseurs de matières premières, leur corps étant le premier gisement de celles-ci.

 

21. Garder à l’esprit la perspective ouverte pour les êtres humains d’une société globale contractuellement régie📜👶 Dans cette nouvelle « conception », le droit subjectif à l’enfant se concrétiserait par le contrat, offert par des prestataires de ce marché spécifique de la filiation, l’État ne devant pas s’y mêler et devant prendre acte des effets du contrat, à savoir recevoir dans son ordre juridique le lien juridique de filiation ainsi délivré. C’est une nouvelle « conception », celle de la filiation par contrat pur et simple, qui a trouvé l’appui de la Première Chambre civile de la Cour de cassation.  Ce pouvoir contractuel écarterait de son chemin l’ordre public (l’article 6 comme l’article 16 du Code civil), l’administration et le juge ayant pour fonction de sécuriser les transactions de filiation.

 

22. L’office du juge limité à la sécurisation de la transaction contractuelle et à son équilibre📜👶Ce « concept du droit à l’enfant », satisfait par le contrat, sécurisé par le juge, renvoie à un concept de société dont le pilier contractuel suffirait à satisfaire les droits de ceux qui ont les moyens d’entrer dans la place privilégiée du contractant. Beaucoup d’autres « innovations » peuvent sortir d’une telle conception, en matière de mariage, de nom de famille.

 

23. Un nouveau pas vers une « société contractuelle » où les parties contractuelles puissantes pourraient engendrer les piliers institutionnels de la société📜👶 Parce que la distinction entre la personne et les choses est par ailleurs attaquée par des entreprises qui affirment que des algorithmes seraient « intelligents », « apprenants », « créatifs », etc., cette voie d’une société globale régie par des contrats pouvant disposer de la distinction entre la personne et les choses, distinction bâtie pour protéger les êtres humains, les perspectives, notamment expérimentées et promues par les entreprises technologiques californiennes, appellent à garder à l’esprit que toute pratique n’est pas « concevable ». Si l’on veut que le Droit demeure un système conçu pour protéger les êtres humains en situation de faiblesse.

 

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