Le droit de l’expropriation et la QPC : esquisse d’un premier bilan de trois années de mise en œuvre du contrôle de constitutionnalité par voie d’exception

Abstract

Does expropriation law conform to the requirements of Articles 2, 6, 16 and 17 of the Declaration of 1789 ? Do property rights, of which no one can be denied due to « public necessity », « legal recognition », and the payment of « just » compensation, benefit from all required guarantees ? Do the litigation possibilities available during a process that is partially administrative and partially judicial address the requirements of the « right to an effective remedy » ? These are some of the questions that, along with many others, are discussed in the framework of this study that intends to review the three-year constitutional period of expropriation law by means of exception in the new mechanism of the QPC. The decisions were identified and analyzed by the State Council and the Supreme Court, periods during which the two jurisdictions decided whether or not to refer the issue in question to the Constitutional Council- depending on whether the issue was considered to be of a « serious nature » – in addition to each of the decisions on the matter determined by the Constitutional Council who was invited to rule on the legality of the contested provisions on each occasion. If the results of this monitoring process can be ultimately considered sparse (only one cancellation with an « under reserve » validation), then this investigation into the core of the process of constitutional litigation of complete expropriation law reveals that the work already conducted on this same law exposes two interrogative subjects that are linearly linked.