Every judicial reform brings its quota of bad news. Finances, human resources, public opinion and the generalised vindictiveness of an institution that we don’t know whether it is criticised for convicting innocents or indulging guilty criminals… so many concerns that successive governments have failed to translate into reforms that are faithful to the spirit of the Enlightenment. We are talking about that spirit, the backbone of our culture and the very foundation of our society and the way in which our French identity must be expressed through our institutions and in society.

The Chevalier de la barre and Jean Calas became ‘affairs’ because they brought the French face to face with their own absurdity. By making citizens voters, our institutions force us to determine our own destiny; by making them jurors, they force us to be irreproachable in the social pact that binds us together.

A criminal court, then, that would henceforth dispense with people’s juries. What an idea… Until 1941, jurors alone deliberated on the guilt of the accused, without the presence of professional judges. This system continues to operate in England and the United States. France preferred to maintain the legacy of Marshal Pétain, the dark vigilante…

Today, the people are out. Only professional magistrates should be able to dispense this ultimate justice, the justice that judges crimes for which the penalty is twenty years. Only professional magistrates, speaking on behalf of the people but without being elected, should be able to say whether society can give a place to these men and women who appear in court.

This is no longer a judicial reform, but a cultural break.

Of course, fair justice based on principles that took centuries to develop is expensive. And at the same time, we have to judge.

A simple solution: blame the current Assize Court and its cumbersome procedures. From now on, it would be responsible for the difficulties encountered by the justice system in accomplishing its work. The presence of juries would be the cause of an expensive justice system. Unnecessarily expensive. And with limited effectiveness.

Because, as everyone knows, judges could do the job on their own. And one day, perhaps, because they don’t want to give the justice system the means to hire more judges, and refuse to look at the quality of their work, they will invent single-judge criminal courts.

The justice system, which claims to be attentive to the situation of each defendant, would necessarily be moving towards a worsening of the sentences handed down: the Criminal Court is the assurance that the investigating judges will not disqualify the offences prosecuted, with the question no longer bothering them: « Are the facts really of a criminal nature? Do I really need to issue an indictment rather than an order for referral to the Criminal Court? Do we really need an Assize Court to judge these facts? And these men? »

The Criminal Court is also a guarantee that a defendant who refutes the charges against him or her will not refer the case to the Investigating Chamber for a criminal re-characterisation of facts that have been corrected. Because the Assize Court is also an opportunity to re-examine the case file, to point out the inconsistencies of the investigating services, to question witnesses and experts about their findings. And sometimes, to show that everyone in the proceedings got it wrong. And it’s not uncommon for everyone to be wrong: there are an estimated 200 to 300 acquittals a year in France.

It’s not certain that the Criminal Court proposed by the government will go in the same direction.

The problem remains structural, with the separation of the Public Prosecutor’s Office from the Court: as long as the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Court come from the same ranks, with the possibility of exchanging their representatives, the Criminal Court will be a court of the prosecution, as already seems to be the case in some courts, where the fate of the accused is already sealed, debate ruled out and hope dashed.

Let us remember this rhetorical impulse that could henceforth affect the judgement of crimes: « Citizens, I will speak to you here with the frankness of a free man: I seek judges among you but I see only accusers ».