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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2007

France in the 1990s : How Judges Came to the Private Sector and Why Their Skills Were Valued

Résumé

France in the 90s saw some judges being recruited as "judicial experts" by a few big French companies. Although only a handful of judges and a few firms were involved the phenomenon is worth analysing. On the one hand the transfer of judges to the private sector could be considered particularly striking because from an historical perspective the basic principles of conduct in the public and private sectors have been considered to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. More precisely, a neutral approach to the search for money and power would not normally be considered compatible with a search for market share. On the other hand the way in which the institutions have adjusted to this possibility is revealing. The means are apparently now available to give judges leave of absence to work in the private sector while safeguarding their old job for them should they ever need it. In parallel to this the recruitment of judges has also begun to change the definition of what constitutes acceptable business practice in the private sector. This paper attempts to explain how it is that some French firms have come to value the French judicial ability so highly. By focusing on the transformations in the relative strengths of the different parties in France in the 1990s that have lead to the rise of a new economic order, the paper shows how the private sector became interested in judges with a particular expertise in certain economic matters while at the same time these judges have taken advantage of the new historical context to put into practice their conception of the way of how business principles should be elaborated by emphasising preventive judicial risk.
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Dates et versions

halshs-00157640 , version 1 (26-06-2007)

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  • HAL Id : halshs-00157640 , version 1

Citer

Murielle Coeurdray. France in the 1990s : How Judges Came to the Private Sector and Why Their Skills Were Valued. Joint Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association (LSA) and the Research Committee on sociology of law (RCSL of ISA) Humboldt University, Berlin, July 25-28, 2007, 2007, Berlin, Germany. ⟨halshs-00157640⟩
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