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Comment by kergonath | Hacker News Reader

> I'm also surprised at how nonchalantly the french supreme (!!) court seems to cope with the museum just ignoring their two month deadline for three months in the new trial...

The conseil d’État is nothing like a Supreme Court. It is an administrative body, not a court of law. This phrase was used because it was easier than explaining how it actually works to a presumably mostly-American audience. France has a civil law system, there cannot be anything like the American Supreme Court.

> Is there no equivalent to "contempt of court" in french law? Is this typical?

It is not a court, and it does not have the powers American judges have. The role of the Council of State (one of them, anyway, and the relevant one here) is to rule on administrative matters. They cannot decide to fine someone or put someone in jail. They can decide that a government body was wrong on something and make it change, that’s it.

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For the purpose of this matter, the Conseil d'État is a court, not an administrative body, it is the highest level and last resort of jurisdiction for administrative law, i.e. the law pertaining to relations between citizens and the State or the local governments. It intervenes as the highest appelate court of administrative tribunals. Its members are judges and their decisions are judgement.

But the Conseil d'État has also many other attributions that are non-jurisdictional.

> They cannot decide to fine someone or put someone in jail.

That's because only criminal court can do that. A divorce court cannot fine someone or put someone in jail. That doesn't make it any less of a court. A civil court doesn't fine, it only grants damages. That doesn't make it any less of a court.

> Its members are judges and their decisions are judgement.

They are civil servants, not magistrates. They don’t have the same independence and are nothing like American judges.

> That's because only criminal court can do that.

That was specifically addressing the contempt of court issue. The Council of State cannot do that. It can make the public institution do something, but it cannot punish the individual. Once the action was deemed illegal, the individual faces disciplinary action from their institution, but the Council does not decide this.

> That doesn't make it any less of a court. A civil court doesn't fine, it only grants damages. That doesn't make it any less of a court.

What makes it not a court in the American sense is that it does not have any magistrate. Commission would be a better word.

You are trying to relate two different legal systems that are don't necessarily have equivalence. The members, although not magistrates, are independent and factually irremovable. When they are in "court" formation as is the case here, they are judges by law, and it is a court. That's where you appeal the decisions of lower judges. Their decisions ("arrêt") are case laws and precedents that affect the entire justice system (in the relations between a citizen and the State).

> That was specifically addressing the contempt of court issue.

There is no such thing as contempt in the US sense, in French courts. The closest would be outrages, which does not apply to the issue in question (delay tactics). Many US legal concepts, even the most basic ones, are simply not transposable to the French system.

> It is not a court

That's weird because the Conseil d'Etat thinks it is the "supreme administrative judge" [0]. How could they not know that they are not a court?

[0] https://www.conseil-etat.fr/decisions-de-justice/juger-les-l...

They are judges in that they make decisions, but they are not magistrates; they are civil servants. The way it works is also quite different from the cour de cassation. There is not really a prosecution, a defense, or parties civiles. It’s its own thing, partly for philosophical reasons related to separation of powers, and partly for practical reasons under the Ancien Régime. The kings did not want magistrates to interfere with the State, so they created a different judicial branch. Napoléon modernised it but kept the same principle.

I don't think we should be missing the forest for the trees.

Yes, because of historical reasons, _technically_ "magistrat" refers specifically to magistrates from the judicial branch and not all judges [0]. This is surely interesting yet administrative judges do the same job of presiding over court proceedings before them and being independent from the political authorities.

Procedure is different between the two branches, but there are also differences of procedures within each branch - for instance between penal vs civil cases.

The Constitutionnal council has ruled that the independance of administrative judges is a constitutional principle in the same way as the judicial judge [1, see point 6].

[0] of course if we need to be really technical, administrative judges are magistrates see: 'Les membres des tribunaux administratifs et des cours administratives d'appel sont des magistrats [...]' https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000... ; but members of the Conseil d'Etat, an administrative court, are not administrative judges - they're conseillers d'Etat.

[1] https://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/decision/1980/80119DC...

> This is surely interesting yet administrative judges do the same job of presiding over court proceedings before them and being independent from the political authorities.

Not really. The fact that members of the Council of State are not magistrates comes up regularly, because it does limit their independence. It works so far because everyone behaves, but this would cause a serious crisis if France one days ends up with someone like Trump or Boris Johnson, who is willing to stop doing the right thing and just use any weapon they can find. To add insult to injury in this case, the supreme body deciding on disciplinary actions in public institutions is the Council of State itself.

> of course if we need to be really technical, administrative judges are magistrates see: 'Les membres des tribunaux administratifs et des cours administratives d'appel sont des magistrats [...]'

This is about the tribunaux administratifs (lower courts) and cours administrative d’appel (appellate courts, the 2nd layer). The conseil d’État sits on top and is different.

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