French Law
on the Internet - The Basics and Free Resources
By Emmanuel Barthe
Emmanuel Barthe has a
Licence en droit (3-year
diploma in French law). He graduated from Ecole de Bibliothécaires Documentalistes
(Librarian Researchers' School), and works as a law librarian researcher at BMH Avocats in Paris, France. He is a Member of
the Board of Juriconnexion,
an association of users of legal databases.
His personal web site can be found at precisement.org
Published May 2005
Table of Contents
1. French legal web sites: the basics
1.1. What's free and valuable v. what's fee-based and valuable?
1.2. How to use search engines and directories to search
for French legal content on the Web
1.3. Lots of documents are still not available in digital
format
2.1. Official, Government maintained, web sites:
legislation, case law from the supreme courts
2.3. La Documentation française:
legal news and quick summaries of French law
2.4. Internet law reviews and law firm publications
Introduction
This article will focus on
French law from a business lawyer's perspective. For a more scholarly
perspective, see:
- Claire Germain's French Law Guide
- Researching French Law-
by Stéphane Cottin and
Jérôme Rabenou.
Neither is this article a
detailed list of all valuable French legal resources. For such lists (in
French), please see:
- the legal web sites directory
maintained by the Paris Bar Library
- the author's directory.
Here, we will see that major
French legal publishers' digital offerings have very recently become mature,
while at the same time free access to French law is more and more a reality.
The Internet is now a powerful media for those who want to access French law.
This article will become
more comprehensive - encompassing fee based resources - in the near future.
1. French legal web sites: the basics
In part 1 of this article,
we will begin with a quick summary of the main characteristics one has to know,
i.e. the basics.
1.1. What's free *and* valuable
v. what's fee-based and valuable
Free content covers two
categories of web sites: mainly Government and Authorities web sites, plus
attorneys' web sites and some bits of the legal publishers' web sites. The
first ones provide mainly legislation and case law and, through the
Administration interpretation of the law, a small part of legal analysis and
doctrine. The second ones provide legal news and they analyze a number of
cases.
Fee-based content will
shortly cover nearly all periodicals and loose-leaf editions published on paper
by traditional legal publishers.
That may be summed up in
two lessons to be remembered about free French law on the Internet:
- Apart from a handful of e-journals in the
Internet law field, do not look for academic, high quality comments on the
free French legal Web. For digital versions of loose-leaf editions and
academic driven law journals, go for the publishers' fee-based servers. If
you seek highly practical databases with hyperlinks between legislation,
doctrine and case law, then go to the publishers' platforms.
- But, if you are searching for an Act, some
Government Decree or a recent decision by one of the supreme French
courts, you should find it freely and quite easily.
For a guide to free
resources, see Part 2.
1.2. How to use search engines and directories to search for
French legal content on the Web
Using search engines to search
for French law documents
Google, Yahoo Search, and
in a lesser way MSN Search, can be effectively used to dig
"gold nuggets", generally more effectively than the only active
French legal search engine, Juritel.info.[1]
The more effective are Google, followed
by Yahoo Search, while MSN Search can only compete with them on very usual,
broad thematic queries. Searching Google for French law is best done through google.fr, by restricting queries to French content (click on
the radio button "Pages:
France" then restart your query).
But beware, the usual
limits of web search engines still remain:
- most of the content of case law databases at Legifrance is not indexed by any search engine;
- depending on your query, about 10 to 50% of the
free French legal web pages available on the Web will not be in the search
engine's results;
- the major French legal publishers have now
uploaded the majority of their looseleaf
editions and some or nearly all of their journals on their portals,
accessible through subscription: Recueil Dalloz
and Actualité Dalloz,
LexisNexis-JurisClasseur,
Lamyline Reflex,
Francis Lefebvre's Navis,
Mementis
and some of their law journals, and
Editions Législatives' Nets Permanents.
Search engines do not index these resources;
- using search engines to search for French law
requires a very good knowledge of French legal vocabulary. Otherwise, the
results will not be relevant or will omit important documents. If you are
not well versed in French law, you may have better luck using Juritel.info, as it only
indexes selected Francophone legal resources (more than 2,000 web sites,
mainly French); alternately, go to one of the best French law website's
directories.
Legal research guides,
legal web sites directories, law lists, libraries' online catalogs and legal
citation guides
The best French law web
sites directories are (all sites in French):
- Paris Bar Library's Directory of legal web
sites, maintained by Hélène Duchesne, librarian: the perfect selection
for the business lawyer/attorney, short, accurate descriptions classified
by subject along the very divisions business lawyers use. Only the best,
most reliable legal web sites are selected. There is only one drawback -
since this directory is written by the Paris Bar Library, it cannot list the
websites of any French attorneys;
- Juriguide:
not the best but the most complete. Also, it uses a good subject
classification. It lacks updated descriptions and URLs;
- Droit en ligne:
maintained by Xavier Haubry, this directory is a
good selection with short, accurate comments, but it is mainly written for
law students;
- Cujas Library's Internet Resources:
an academic selection, with accurate descriptions, by librarians of the
biggest French academic law library. But neither the classification nor
the selection are "business law oriented";
- Juridiconline's legal web directory
by Arnaud Dumourier: more than 2,000 sites
listed, often described (very quickly), well classified, but neither
commented on nor selected.
1.3. Lots of documents are still not available in digital
format
At the present time, a lot
of French law remains - and will remain - on paper. In talking about
chronological coverage, here is a rule of thumb: in the private sector, the
publishers have no digital content of their own dating back before 1985. Only
official legal data - case law and legislation - will go back further.
Law
journals
Nearly all law reviews and
law journals are not available on the Web pre-1990. The Recueil Dalloz
starts in 1990. Les Petites affiches start in 1995,
as do the G (Générale), E (Entreprise)
and N (Notariale) editions of the Semaine juridique.
The other journals published by LexisNexis France
(ex-Editions du JurisClasseur)
are not yet available on the LexisNexis-JurisClasseur online platform,
but their publisher has announced that its monthly law journals - the ones that
serve as updates to the JurisClasseur looseleaf editions - shall be online in June 2005. All Lamy journals but for
some very recent ones are available online on its Lamyline
Reflex platform.
There are, of course, some
exceptions to this rule, but they don't go back that far, as, for instance, the
Bulletin Joly
Sociétés (1986-.). A false exception - a reference database with
only bibliographic data and abstract - is the doctrine part of Juris-Data, indexing articles from approximately 1970
onwards.
Case law
Apart from the supreme
courts (see infra), only a small selection of French jurisprudence is available
online. The supreme courts go back to the 1960s on Legifrance
and are nearly complete from 1988 onwards, but decisions from the appellate and
lower jurisdictions are scarce. In fact, no jurisprudence is available online
before 1958.
Full text of the civil
judgments of the Cour de cassation starts with the year 1959 on Lamyline Reflex and 1960 on Legifrance.
Criminal judgments start with 1970 on Lamyline and
1963 on Legifrance. Before 1988's rulings, Legifrance contains only the judgments published in the
Bulletin de la Cour de cassation.
Juris-Data is the only important database of decisions of
first and second instance courts. It is now part of LexisNexis-JurisClasseur
and only accessible through subscription to this global service. It is a small
selection -- less than a few percent of the current French lower courts
production -- and the criteria used remains vague (the interest of the
decision). Although its abstracts go back to 1960, its full text only starts
from 1985. It is often cited for its cour d'appel decisions.
Legislation and regulation
Even the French official
gazette (Journal officiel) in digital format is not
really complete before year 1990. Legifrance before 1990 does not contain nominations of
civil servants (mesures nominatives). And the same
limit is true for Lamyline Reflex. The Textes généraux part (legislation
and regulation) of the Journal officiel is, however,
available from 1955 on Lamyline Reflex and from 1947
on Legifrance.
About the Official
Bulletins of the Ministries (bulletins officiels -- BOs), one should bear in mind that they are not part of Legifrance, the bulk of the Government's efforts to put
French law online, free. Already, two Bulletins -- the BO du
Ministère de l'Intérieur
and the BO de l'Environnement -- have lost some of
their online content following redesigns of their respective ministries' web
sites.
2. Free
resources
2.1. Official, Government maintained, web sites:
legislation, case law from the supreme courts
Official Gazette and
Bulletins
- Journal Officiel for
all its editions: Lois et décrets,
Associations et fondations d'entreprises,
Débats parlementaires (Sénat),
Questions (Sénat, Assemblée nationale)
- Bulletins officiels (BOs)
from all Government departments ("ministères").
They publish detail regulations (arrêtés ministériels, circulaires,
instructions), especially the "circulaires".
From 2000 on average, the BOs' contents are
online
- Consolidated legislation (on Legifrance: Codes, lois et règlements)
Another version of the
Journal officiel may be found at Adminet,
where it is reproduced on static web pages. That makes them more easily indexed
in search engines. Those pages also have links to the Legifrance
HTML and PDF pages.
Please note that although
the Journal officiel database on Legifrance
may contain texts dating back before WWII, the JO Lois et décrets
is not complete before 1990. Between 1947 and 1990, minor, low level texts may
remain unfound. Also, not all texts have been consolidated and sometimes, the
quasi-automatic techniques used for consolidation creates errors, which is
where the JurisClasseur Codes et lois
-- available in the new LexisNexis-JurisClasseur
portal -- may help. And Legifrance's Codes are not
annotated. For annotated Codes online, one will have to wait for the *future* Dalloz portal.
Official supreme courts case
law reporters
- Bulletin des arrêts de la Cour de cassation (Supreme
Judiciary Court): civil cases from 1960, criminal ones from 1963 (in Juriprudence
judiciaire on Legifrance,
check the box "Arrêts publiés au
bulletin")
- Bulletin d'information de la Cour de
cassation (a selection among the decisions published in the
Bulletin des arrêts)
- Recueil Lebon des arrêts du Conseil d'Etat (Supreme
administrative Court) from 1965 (in the expert version of Juriprudence administrative
on Legifrance, check the box "Arrêts publiés au recueil" on the right of "Conseil d'Etat")
- Arrêts du Conseil constitutionnel (Constitutional Council's decisions:
on the Conseil's site or on Legifrance)
from the beginning (1958).
- That entire huge official content can be reached
at or through the French official portal Legifrance.
It should be kept in mind that most of that content cannot be reached
through any web search engine, the only exception being original (as
published in the Journal officiel) and
consolidated acts. [2]
2.2. How a Government project becomes an Act
Legislative documents also
are free and allow any lawyer, political professional or lobbyist to follow the
legislative procedure step by step.
- First, the Prime Minister's site, which is in
fact the French Government web site, publishes all the Government press
releases -- especially the account of the traditional Wednesday meeting of
the State Secretaries (ministres), the Prime
Minister and the President -- and all legislative reform projects before
they come before the Parliament. All the news from the Prime Minister's
site may be subscribed to through RSS feeds;
- Then the text of the project together with
explanations will be uploaded on the relevant State Secretary's web site.
Every ministre's
site publishes his/her speeches and the ministère's press releases;
- At the same time, the project is transmitted to one
of the two Chambers of Parliament (Assemblée nationale
and Sénat),
in most cases the National Assembly (Assemblée nationale);
- Every project (projet: coming from the Government)
or proposal (proposition: coming
from Parliament) must be voted in identical terms by both Chambers.
Generally, amendments are published on the same day they were voted or the
next "business" day (remember: the MPs and senators often work
during the weekend). After two readings by both Houses, in case of even a
slight difference between the National Assembly's and the Senate's
version- which happens not too infrequently - a number MPs and senators
meet in a special body called Commission mixte parlementaire (CMP) to work out a settlement. It
generally succeeds. If not, the National Assembly has the final word;
- To know all about the Senate and the legislative
procedure before it, see http://www.senat.fr/role/index.html
(in French); to know all about the National Assembly and the legislative
procedure before it, see Connaissance de l'Assemblée
(in French) and a quick introduction to the
French national Assembly (in English). You may prefer a
simplified chart describing the legislative procedure
(in French);
- Both the Assembly and
the Senate issue a
daily newsletter listing all new documents published on their respective
web site with hyperlinks to them. Documents and transcripts of the debates
are usually published on their web sites within 12 hours to a few days
after their release or the session;
- Often, then, the voted upon text is sent - by 60
MPs or 60 senators - to the Constitutional Council (Conseil
constitutionnel) in order to check its respect
of the Constitution. Major reforms often get one or two articles declared
unconstitutional by the Court;
- The text, minus the articles invalidated by the Conseil constitutionnel, is
then signed by the President and published in the Journal officiel édition Lois et décrets;
- Then the Administration will give its interpretation
of the new Statute. Every ministre's site publishes his/her speeches and the ministère's
press releases, and also its Official Bulletin (Bulletin officiel), as mentioned above. Bulletins officiels are the type of publication where most of
the low level official texts are published. Among those texts are the circulaires
(memorandum service instructions), which state in great detail the
Administration's interpretation of new legislation. In matters such as
consumer protection, labor law, social security and tax, this
interpretation is often the only commentary available. In tax matters,
such interpretation is legally binding for the Administration. And in any
case, if one knows the existence and reference of a circulaire, one has the
right to gain access to it, according to the Access to administrative
documents Act of 1978 (Loi sur
l'accès aux documents administratifs:
Act No. 78-753 of 17 July 1978, translated in English
on CADA's web site). The intricacies of this
crucial area of French administrative law are summarized on the Commission
d'accès aux documents administratifs
(CADA's) web site;
- The Administration then issues regulations
("décrets" (decrees) and "arrêtés") to apply the new legislation. Those
texts are not so minor. They may modify the whole regulatory part of a
Code ("partie Décrets");
For a quick overview of the
basic structure of the French legal system, see Researching French Law by Stéphane Cottin and Jérôme Rabenou.
2.3. La Documentation française:
legal news and quick summaries of French law
Another major player among
the French official legal web sites is the Documentation française
(DF). The DF is the Government's publisher. On the Web, the DF maintains a
number of resources which can ease the understanding of French law for a French
speaking foreigner who does not follow French legal news everyday. The DF's web
sites should be a place to start a number of your French law research, mainly
thematic research and global understanding of a reform.
Summaries of French
policies and legal reforms:
- Les Dossiers d'actualité sur la France
(on ladocumentationfrancaise.fr): these special reports, rather short and
not updated regularly (especially after the reform has been voted),
summarize only the most important French political debates and reforms,
such as the pensions' reform of 2003;
- Panorama des lois (on vie-publique.fr): all the French
recent legal reforms, summarized in one or to pages. The Bills are clearly
separated from the adopted Acts. Quite -- not always perfectly -- up to
date, but quick and very handy;
- The Bibliothèque des rapports publics
(BRP) (Public Reports Library), which is a repository for all the official
reports written for the French Government or by one of the
authorities/administrations, such as the Cour de
cassation or the Conseil d'Etat
annual reports. A biweekly newsletter
lists all reports published on the site in the meantime. In 2004, the BRP
has experienced nearly 1 million downloads;
- The DF also maintains Service-public.fr, a very powerful legal
resource for foreigners since it contains a directory of the French
central and local administration with names, addresses, telephone and fax
numbers, e-mail addresses and web site URLs (Annuaire de l'administration)
and - last but not least - Vos droits et démarches (Your
Rights), a huge guide (rather a mix between a guide and a FAQ) written for
the common people rather than for the professional but which gives a quick
first summary of a number of subjects matters, such as tax, labor law or foreigners in France.
For instance, here are the basics for a
non EU citizen who wants to be allowed to work in France
2.4. Internet law reviews and law firm publications
Apart from the above
mentioned official sources, the most important free French legal web sites also
include:
- SOS-Net: a
huge legal guide (in French) for the everyday person, which could rival
with Service-public.fr if only its updates were more frequent;
- A major part of legal theory, textbooks and law reviews, and case law reporters on the French law of the Internet is on the Internet and free: Juriscom, Legalis.net, le Forum des droits sur l'Internet, Droit-NTIC,
and Fidalweb,
although not written
by law professors, are
de facto among the most notorious law reviews about French law of the Internet;
- A variety of papers, law reports and newsletters
articles from French attorneys demonstrating their expertise. Most of that
content is available on the law firms' web sites: the Freshfields Paris and Gide Loyrette
Nouel newsletters are just examples.
French law firms and Paris offices of international law firms also make
available a growing number of the reports they write for legal publishers'
law reports and they are often in English, such as this article by
Xavier Renard and Julien
Soisson of Latham & Watkins Paris office, on
French law of cross-border mergers taken from Tax Notes International. A huge list of
web sites of all the French attorneys who publish law reports is available
on the Cujas library web site, France's biggest
law library (alas, there is no direct hyperlink to the publications' web
page of those sites, nor any subject matter classification -- which by all
means would have been very difficult to build).