Launch of the working group to reduce justice processing times

The * working group for the reduction of the processing times of justice, installed today by the Minister of Justice, will have to make concrete proposals to relieve the courts by absorbing the stocks of cases constituted within the jurisdictions.

Increase of nearly 43,000 cases compared to the end of 2019 of stock of civil court cases

“The various social and health crises that our country has experienced since the end of 2019 and then in 2020 have particularly affected the proper functioning of the courts” declared Éric Dupond-Moretti, Minister of Justice. Even if the courts’ business continuity plans that were implemented from March 16 to May 11, 2020 made it possible to maintain essential activities in terms of individual freedom and the protection of vulnerable people, “The courts were unable to process normally for many months cases in criminal or civil matters”. This crisis therefore affected the capacity of justice to deal with the cases before it. “Very many hearings were postponed or canceled and as many cases could not be judged.” Thus, according to statistical data from the Directorate of Judicial Services, Courts at the end of October 2020 saw their stock of civil cases increase by nearly 43,000 cases compared to the end of 2019. In correctional matters, at the end of September 2020, this stock of continued cases increased by 19,000 cases compared to the end of 2019.
For their part, Local courts have seen an increase in the number of cases pending processing of nearly 10,000 cases in the first ten months of 2020. Finally, labor courts have experienced a substantial increase in their stock of nearly 15,000 cases.
For Éric Dupond-Moretti, “What is at stake is access to the public service of justice and, ultimately, citizens’ confidence in the judicial institution. Because for citizens, these stocks translate into ever longer adjudication times. And for professionals, they sometimes lead to discouragement ”.

Three purposes for concrete and innovative proposals

The * working group, will “Work together – and in an unprecedented way – all the actors of Justice: magistrates, clerks, lawyers, civil servants” and will pursue three aims in order to formulate “Concrete and innovative proposals, even very innovative, perhaps even disruptive, in order to be able to face this exceptional situation of stocks and this great challenge represented by the reduction of processing times” :

• Identify the rules and procedural vectors to facilitate the handling of criminal and civil cases;
• propose practices between legal professionals allowing to optimize judicial time when possible; as you know, i want to promote and share these good practices and this working group must be able to both reflect local practices but also propose new ones;
• examine the conditions under which lawyers could participate in judicial activity in an exceptional manner, “Because the challenge is exceptional, this can of course concern the participation of lawyers in collegial hearings alongside magistrates, as the code of judicial organization may already allow it on very rare occasions. As a lawyer, it has happened to me three times in my life to complete hearings alongside magistrates. I retain a memory of exchanges of great richness and very high quality. I hope that the working group can reflect on expanding these possibilities by drawing on, if necessary, foreign experiences such as in the Netherlands ” he clarified.

Arnaud Dumourier (@adumourier)
Follow @adumourier