Interesting. Doesn't France have a legal system that leans more towards Civil Law than Common Law? So how much legal validity does this judgement have?
The cour de cassation, the highest court of appeals, has rendered a judgement about something which is ambiguous in the law. This is a judgment about a particular case in a particular situation, and judges are explicitly forbidden from writing anything in their judgment that would look like a general statement. Lower courts are independent and can render different judgments in similar cases if they interpret the law and the situation presented to them differently. So why does it matter that the cour de cassation created this precedent? Well, it's the highest court of appeal. Any lower court who judges differently sees clearly the "risk" that their judgment is appealed, passed on to the cour de cassation, overturned, and needed to be judged again. We have professional judges in France, and they recognize there is little point in wasting the State's resources on such things without good reason.
But because we are in a civil law country, it is quite likely that the existing law will be clarified and supplant the precedent. In a civil law country, precedent is always subordinate to codified law.
* It doesn't judge the constitutionality of laws. That's the constitutional court.
* It doesn't judge cases related to complaints against the administration. That's for the council of state.
* Its precedents don't bind lower courts, who are free to rule differently.
* In France, judges are explicitly forbidden to write a judgement that seems to hold in a general manner (article 5 of the penal procedure code) - we have a much stricter separation between the legislative and judiciary. They always judge specific cases. This applies to the cour de cassation as well.
It's just not useful to try and compare the US and French legal systems. They're too different.
« Il est défendu aux juges de prononcer par voie de disposition générale et réglementaire sur les causes qui leur sont soumises. »
https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000...
Could you clarify more? You also said, "In a civil law country, precedent is always subordinate to codified law." That would imply that there is less room for judges to interpret the law more freely. (In India, for example, constitutional courts can even expand or contract the law, by striking down or adding provisions to it through the power of judicial reviews.)
Indeed, this is a decision of the "Cour de Cassation", which is the highest court and which does not judge guilt in specific cases (edited to clarify), but whether the law was correctly applied. So by judging that this is a criminal offence (actually they have only confirmed previous legal decisions so it was expected) they have ruled that French Law states that this is a criminal offence, including based on jurisprudence (previous decisions). So that rather settles it.
It only checks that the law was correctly applied, it is not an appeal where the guilt is re-assessed (that's what I meant, obviously not very clearly).
[1] https://juripredis.com/la-jurisprudence-dossier/comment-defi....