The Responsibility of Judges in France

Abstract

In the mountains of Kashmir lived a Sultan, the Sultan of Salamandragore, so concerned that the laws he had prescribed were strictly observed that he found good reasons for his judges to condemn all his subjects to death, and to have them dispatched by his executioner. Deprived of sleep by remorse and haunted by his victims, he blamed his judges, and had them decapitated in their turn. Thus begins a cruel Oriental tale, freely adapted in a poem by Jacques Prévert, which is, it seems to me, quite a good illustration of the paradox of the judge’s responsibility comparing the extraordinary nature of their power to their relationship to politics. Nevertheless, from this point of view, there is indeed in France a question, that is to say a democratic debate, a conflict of opinion generally perceived to be the result of the growing role of law in the regulation of social relationships and the increasing power of judges in the private domain as well as in the public, economic and social spheres.