Michael Nash is heartened by the proposed cross-fertilisation of Anglo & French legal systems
President Sarkozy’s recent announcement that he is intending to abolish the old system of investigating magistrates in France should come as no surprise. This is because cross-fertilisation of the two great legal systems of the Western world, the Common Law and the Civil Law, is no new thing.
There are, however, some surprising aspects to the announcement, and there is a thinly veiled subtext to the whole exercise, calling into question the balance of executive, legislative and judicial powers. Sarkozy was trained as a lawyer, following in his mother’s footsteps, but only practised for two years. His heart was not in it, having been given already to politics. Now he is seeking to combine these two disciplines.
It was what the president considered to be a particular abuse of power by an examining magistrate (the juge d’instruction) who ordered the dawn arrest and detention of a newspaper executive in a minor libel case, that made the president decide on this course of action. The origin of this particular judge
