Publications

Without warning neither the people who publish, nor the Internet users who react to their activity of publishing, the magazine Compliances carried out a manual survey of people active on Linkedin on the subject of COMPLIANCE this resulted in the following table, presented as the "Top 10 influencers" in this area: It emerges from this initiative taken by a third party, on a third professional network, that MAFR is by far the first personality in this ranking, Not just when it comes to people who follow the posts But still in terms of number of publications and above all of interactions generated by them.   - N.B .: the information on the creation of the Compliance Legal Design collection had not yet been made on December 11, 2020 on LinkedIn.  

► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, "La compliance" ("Compliance"), in J.-B. Racine (ed.), Le droit économique au XXIe siècle. Notions et enjeux, LGDJ, "Droit & Économie" Serie, 2020, pp. 97-108 - 📝read the article (in French) - 🚧read the bilingual Working Paper which is the basis of this article, with additional developments, technical references and hyperlinks - 📕read a general presentation of the book, Le droit économique au XXIe siècle. Notions et enjeux, in which this article is published - 📚see the presentation of the other books published in this Serie, founded and directed by Marie-Anne Frison-Roche   ► English Summary of the article:  - 🌐follow Marie-Anne Frison-Roche on LinkedIn 🌐follow Marie-Anne Frison-Roche on Instagram 🌐subscribe to the Newsletter MAFR Regulation, Compliance, Law

Full reference : Frison-Roche, M.A., Pour une conception humaniste du Droit des affaires et de son enseignement (For a humanist conception of Business Law and of its teaching), in Un juriste pluriel. Mélanges en l'honneur d'Alain Couret, Editions Francis Lefebvre and Dalloz, 2020, pp. 985-990.   Read the article   Read the working paper, with additional developments, technical references and hyperlinks on which this article is based   Read the general presentation of the book in which this article has been published

This working paper served as a basis for an interview organized by Olivia Dufour in French in Actu-juridiques-Lextenso on 11st of January 2021.   

Full Reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., L'aventure du Droit de la Compliance ("The Adventure of Compliance Law"), Chronique de Droit de la Compliance ("Chronicles MAFR – Compliance Law"), Recueil Dalloz, September 24, 2020. Read the Chronicle (in French) This Chronicle of Compliance Law is based on a bilingual working document with additional developments, technical references and hypertext links. Read the Working Paper (written in English).   - Chronicle Summary: Compliance Law is an "adventure" in that it is a new branch of Law, anchored in Regulatory Law, which has freed itself from it while retaining the major principles to which it gives a new breath. In the same way that I entered Sciences Po in 2000 to create a Master de Droit économique centered around Regulation Law, this new branch of Law, a Forum de la Régulation and a Chaire Régulation, now "20 ans après" and as in any adventure, the objective is to give solid, coherent and substantial bases to this Compliance Law which is practiced intensely without being fully conceived. Compliance should not be reduced to a procedure of effectiveness and efficiency of other rules, such as Competition Law or Criminal Law, a sort of enforcement process going from the Ex Post to the Ex Ante, because that would be both too little (simply processes) and too much (the power of Compliance Law in the service of all rules, the violence of Compliance being able to serve in very violent Substantial Law itself, which one can observe in some legal systems). It is necessary to anchor all this new branch of Law in goals, this Law being teleological in nature as is the Law of Regulation. These goals are "monumental", by which the public authorities express still, and more now than in the past, "pretensions", such as the protection of the environment or of people even if they are distant from the territory on which they have traditionally taken. All these "monumental goals" converge towards a goal that encompasses them all: the protection of the person, which justifies the unusual power of legal Compliance mechanisms and the new relationship between States and "crucial operators". In this, Europe is exemplary of what could be this new branch of Law of which it bears the model.   -  

This working paper is an extraction of an eponym newsletter published in the Newsletter MAFR – Law, Regulation & Compliance on 21st of September 2020 on LinkedIn. Read the newsletter of 21st of September 2020

Full reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, Se tenir bien dans l'espace numérique, in Penser le droit de la pensée. Mélanges en l'honneur de Michel Vivant, Lexis Nexis and Dalloz, 2020, pp. 155-168. - 📝Read the article (in French) - 🚧Read the working paper, written in English, on which this article is based, with additional developments, technical references, and hyperlinks   English summary of the article: The digital space is one of the scarce spaces not framed by a specific branch of Law, Freedom also offering opportunity to its actors to not "behave well", that is to express and diffuse broadly and immediately hateful thoughts through Hate speechs, which remained before in private or limited circles. The intimacy of Law and of the legal notion of Person is broken: Digital permits to individuals or organizations to act as demultiplied and anonymous characters, digital depersonalized actors who carry behaviors that are hurtful to other's dignity.  Against that, Compliance Law offers an appropriate solution: internalizing in digital crucial operators the mission to disciplinary and substantially hold the digital space. The digital space has been structured by powerful firms able to maintain order. Because Law must not reduce digital space to be only a neutral market of digital prestations, these crucial operators, like social networks or search engines, must be forced to substantially control behaviors. It could be about an obligation of internet users to act with their face uncover, "real identity" policy controlled by firms, and to respect others' rights, privacy rights, dignity, intellectual property rights. In their Regulatory function, digital crucial firms must be supervised by public authorities.  Thus, Compliance law substantially defined is the protector of the person as "subject of law" in the digital space, by the respect that others must have, this space passing from the status of free space to the one of civilized space, in which everyone is obliged to behave well.  -   Read to go further:  Frison-Roche, M.-A., L'apport du Droit de la Compliance à la gouvernance d'Internet, 2019 Frison-Roche, M.-A. (dir.), Internet, un espace d'interrégulation, 2016 - 🌐follow Marie-Anne Frison-Roche on LinkedIn 🌐follow Marie-Anne Frison-Roche on Instagram 🌐subscribe to the Newsletter MAFR Regulation, Compliance, Law 

This working document is the basis of an article written in French and published in the Recueil Dalloz in the Chroniques MAFR Droit de la Compliance (see the English presentation of this Chronique). Read the presentation in English ot the other chroniques published by the Recueil Dalloz in these series Chroniques MAFR Droit de la Compliance

Référence : Frison-Roche, M.-A., Building by Law the unity of Compliance Tools from the definition of Compliance Law by its "Monumental Goals"", Working Paper 2020.  This Working Paper has been the basis for an article in the collective book Compliance Tools, 2020 - Working Paper summary: The "tools of Compliance" do not stack on top of each other. They form a system, thanks to a unity drawn from the goals that all these multiple and different tools serve: the "Monumental Goals" by which Compliance Law is defined. All these tools are configured by these goals and in order to master all these techniques, it is essential to put them all in perspective of what Compliance Law is, which is designed teleologically with regard to its goals. Extension of Regulatory Law and as, Compliance Law is built on a balance between the principle of competition and other concerns that public authorities claim to take care of. Compliance Law has moreover more "pretensions" in this respect, for example in environmental matters. All the means are then good, the violence of the tools marrying without difficulty with the voluntary commitments since it is the goals which govern this branch of Law. As adopted legal solutions show, a common method of interpretation and common levels of constraint for all Compliance Tools result from this definition. Starting from the goals (in which legal normativity is housed), the interpretation of the different tools is thus unified, without the necessity of a legislation including all these Compliance tools. Moreover, the different degrees of constraint do not operate according to the consideration of sources (traditional legal criterion) but by the goals, according to the legal distinction between obligations of means and obligations of results which result from the articulation between tools, of which the establishment is an obligation of result, and the goals, of which the achievement is only an obligation of means.

Full Reference : Frison-Roche, M.-A., Rights, primary and natural Compliance Tools, Working Paper, July  2020. This Working paper is the basis for an article published in the collective book  Compliance Tools . - There was a time when Regulatory techniques  were above all only calculations of the best tarifications, taken up by monopolistic companies, while Compliance techniques were only obedience to all rules governing us. All this could therefore only be business of abacus and badine, used by engineers and consisted only of mechanical reflexes of "conformity" to all kinds of rules with the corset ensuring that everyone is bent in front of them¹Contre cela, la critique radicale, savante et fondée d'Alain Supiot, dans l'ensemble de son oeuvre et plus particulièrement dans La gouvernance par les nombres, 2015. . In the perspective of a Regulation and Compliance thus conceived, that is to say effective, it would not be necessary to insert prerogatives for people, since these could only be sources of inefficiency, of cost. and protest, where the order would come from figures set in advance and controlled processes. Systems have since evolved to integrate these prerogatives of each person: rights. Is this evolution really acquired? Maybe more effectively in Regulation Law than in its extension which is Compliance Law. This may be surprising since Compliance Law, in that it extends Regulatory Law in enterprises should, on the contrary, promote rights by meeting the enterprise, which is a group of people ….²Sur la définition de l'entreprise comme un groupe de personnes qui se réunissent pour entreprise, v. le travail de référence d'Alain Supiot, par exemple son article d'introduction "L'entreprise...", dans l'ouvrage qu'il a dirigé L'entreprise dans la mondialisation ...., 2015 ... . But the modern reluctance to define the enterprise (and the company) as a group of people and the preference given to a definition of the company (and the enterprise) as an "asset", a "good" of which investors would be the owners, maybe explains the sidelining of rights not only in Regulatory Law but also in Compliance Law even though it is being deployed in the space of the enterprise³Si l'entreprise pouvait renaître comme idée de cristallisation d'une idée commune entre des personnes, naturellement titulaires de droits subjectifs, exerçant ensemble leur liberté d'entreprendre pour réaliser un projet commun, ce qui correspond à la définition classique du contrat d'entreprise donnée à l'article 1832 du Code civil, cela renforcerait considérablement la présence des droits subjectifs dans le Droit de la Compliance et conforterait la nature humaniste de celui-ci. En outre, dans une telle définition la loi de la majorité, qui n'est qu'une loi de fonctionnement d'une catégorie de sociétés que sont les sociétés de capitaux, deviendrait moins puissante, au profit des "droits propres" de tout associé (au-delà du cercle des sociétés de personnes), sans qu'il soit besoin d'aller chercher au-delà du cercle des associés ou titulaires de titres émis par la société ou l'entreprise (dit shareholders) et d'aller donner le "droit à la parole" à des personnes qui, parce qu'elles sont "concernées" (les "parties prenantes", les skateholders) ont désormais de plus en plus le "droit à la parole". . In addition, if Regulation has long been the subject of a branch of Law in which rights have full place, the presentation of Compliance as "conformity", that is to say the proven assurance of obedience to all the applicable rules, leaves no space for the prerogatives of people, which appear rather as resistance to the obedience that would be expected of them. There again, the expectation of what would be a good ratio of conformity between behaviors and prescriptions would be obtained by a "design", data processing being the new form of calculation, improved by precision tools where the being human is not required⁴La Compliance by Design reflète ces tensions. Elles sont particulièrement bien décrites par Cécile Granier. V. ..... His fallibility and the little confidence which one can place in him leads even to exclude the people and to conceive Compliance system between machines, not only to alert of the failures, but also to manufacture the "regulations" and to connect those. here, in a "regulatory fabric" without a jump stitch, entirely enveloping human beings⁵Contre cette conception de la légalité, qui prévoit tout et à laquelle il faudrait prouver par avance et que l'on se "conforme" entièrement, ce qui est contraire aux principes mêmes du libéralisme dont le principe est la liberté d'agir et non pas l'obéissance, Carbonnier affirme que les règles sont faites ne pas s'appliquer et qu'elles ne sont que le "mince vernis" des choses, qu'il convenait de se méfier de la "passion du Droit". V. not. son dernier ouvrage Droit et passion du droit sous la Vième République, 1995. Carbonnier est considéré comme le plus grand juriste français du XXième siècle. Il rédigea les lois qui réformèrent en profondeur le Code civil et publia des ouvrages sur "l'art législatif". . It would therefore be with regret, and probably because some constitutional jurisdictions still attach some value to fundamental rights that the systems of "conformity" of behavior to the rules make some room for the prerogatives of people, their more essential rights. It is sometimes said that this is part of the cost. It would therefore be as by "forcing" that rights would exist in Compliance systems, a kind of price that the effectiveness of Compliance must pay as a tribute to the Rule of Law principle⁶Au contraire, l'Etat de Droit n'est pas un coût extérieur au système de Compliance efficace, que celui-ci doit internaliser. Il est le fondement même du Droit de la Compliance. Voir dans ce sens la démonstration faite par le président de la Cour de Justice de l'Union européenne, Koen Laearnt, ..., in Pour une Europe de la Compliance, 2019. . If in a poor definition Compliance is conceived in this only "conformity", leading to a landscape in which the behaviors of the people adjust to the rules governing the situations, Compliance being only the most "effective way" to ensure the application of the rules, in a mechanical perspective of Law, then it would effectively be necessary to reduce the prerogatives of people to a minimal part, because any "additional cost" is intended to disappear, even if it is produced here by constitutional requirements. In the looming battle between the effectiveness of the application of rules and the concern for the legal prerogatives of people who should above all obey and not claim their rights, especially their right not to obey , or their right to keep secret in Compliance techniques which is based on the centralization of information, the effectiveness of efficiency could only, by the very power of this tautology, prevail⁷Sur la démonstration comme quoi la Constitution, en ce qu'elle contient de l'incalculable, est broyée dans cette façon de faire, v. Alain Supiot, Intervention 2019. …  The defeat would not be total, however, collaboration would still be possible and active between people availing themselves of their rights and Compliance Law. Indeed, in many respects, if rights have been recognized in Compliance systems, it is not only because Compliance Law, like any branch of Law, can only be deployed with respect for fundamental rights. kept by fundamental legal texts, but also because of the effectiveness of rights as " Compliance Tools". Indeed, because they constitute a very effective "tool" to ensure the entire functioning of a system whose goals are so difficult to achieve, because every effort must be made to achieve these goals, the public authorities not only rely on the power of crucial operators, but also distribute prerogatives to people who, thus encouraged, activate the Compliance system and participate in the achievement of the "monumental goals". Rights can prove to be the most effective tools to effectively achieve the goals set, to such an extent that they can be considered as "primary tools"  (I). But it is necessary to be more ambitious, even to reverse the perspective. Indeed because all the Monumental Goals by which Compliance Law is defined can be reduced to the protection of people, that is to say to the effectiveness of their prerogatives, by a mirror effect between rights. given by Law to persons and the rights which constitute the very purpose of all Compliance Law, in particular the protection of all human beings, even if they are in a situation of great weakness, rights become a "natural tool" of Compliance Law (II). Rights are the Compliance Law future. 

This Working Paper has been the basis for the first conference of the two conferences in the colloquium in Toulouse (France) under the scientific direction of Lucien Rapp, about Les incitations, outils de la Compliance ("Incitations, as Compliance Tools"), on December 12, 2019, the first one about The sanction as incitation and the second one about Incitations and Compliance Law (synthesis of this colloquium).  Then, it has been the basis for the article, to be published in the books Les outils de la Compliance and Compliance Tools in the Series Régulations & Compliance. Read a general presentation of this book.     Summary and Introduction of this Working Paper: At first glance, Compliance and Incentives appear to be totally opposite. For two major reasons. In the first place, because the sanctions have a central place in the Law of Compliance and the incentives suppose an absence of constraint on the operators. Secondly, because the incentives are linked to self-regulation and that Compliance Law assumes a strong presence of public authorities. Taking the first reason, one should choose: either Compliance or Incentives! Either the effectiveness of one or the effectiveness of the others; either the techniques of one or the techniques of others; either the philosophy of one or the philosophy of the others. Resign oneself to the loss that such a necessary choice would involve. But to put the terms thus amounts to think poorly about the situations and reduce the fields of the solutions which they call for. If we take a rich definition of Compliance Law, it is possible on the contrary to articulate Compliance and Incentives. From this perspective, sanctions can no longer become what blocks the use of incentives but, on the contrary, what constitutes them. Even more, the coupling between Incentives and the requirements of Compliance Law must be strongly encouraged, as soon as the public authorities supervise in Ex Ante all the initiatives taken by the "crucial operators".  This working document deals with the first issue¹La seconde problématique est analysée in "Compliance et Incitation : un couple à propulser", 2020.. Indeed, the so-called incentive theory targets mechanisms that do not directly use coercion. They would therefore have little place in Compliance Law. But Compliance seems saturated with sanction procedures. We can even say that it seems to put them at the center, the public authorities presenting the number of sanctions as a sign of success, while the companies seem obsessed with their prospects, the two concerns ending in such a strange convergence that are the D.P.O… An honest observer can only feel immediately uneasy. Indeed, he can only raise the definition of the sanction as a "constraint" triggered Ex Post, at the very heart of Compliance Law which is presented as a set of Ex Ante mechanisms. Based on this contradiction in terms, should we give up the association and think that it would be wrong against the spirit to think of the sanction as an incentive? It is undoubtedly in this connection that one perceives most clearly the clash of two cultures, which do not communicate, while technically they apply to the same situations. Indeed, because Compliance was firstly designed by Finance, everything is a tool for it. Therefore, the tendancy to think about the sanction only as an incentive is very strong in Compliance Law. It manifests itself continuously and will not stop (I). But whatever the reasons are to conceive it this way, the principles of the Rule of Law cannot disappear and if we do not want them to be erased, then they must be articulated (II). It’s an essential adjustment. This is why we can literally say that Compliance has set Criminal Law on fire by its conception, logical but closed in on itself, of sanctions as simple incentives. For Law to remain, however, it is necessary to hold a very firm definition of Compliance Law centered on its Monumental Goal, which is the protection of the person.

This working document served as the basis for an article, contribution in the collective book Compliance Tools, 2020 - Summary of this working paper: Training is a specific Compliance tool and a dimension that each Compliance tool expresses.  Firstly, as a training it is a specific Compliance Tool, it is supervised by Regulators. It even becomes compulsory when it is contained in Compliance programs. Since the effectivity and the efficiency are legal requirements, what is therefore the margin of companies to design it and how can we measure its result? Secondly, as each Compliance Tool contains, more and more, an educational dimension, we can take back each of them to detect this perspective. Thus, even sanctions and prescriptions, are lessons: lessons given, lessons to follow. The question is then to know who, in this so pedagogic Compliance Law, are the "instructors"? -       Introduction: Training is akin to these things – and very precious – that we do, or even dream of doing, but so poorly expressed from the moment we take them as an object of technical writing. Just do it. It would be however unfortunate to publish a book on Compliance Tools without giving a particular place to training, the piece would miss in the puzzle. So much money spent by companies, by fair or foul means, especially when Compliance programs imposed as sanctions contain heavy training obligations leading people to retain word for word everything that is forbidden to them, in order to always abstain from now on. Training is thus the sharp point of such Hard Law appearing under the steel of Criminal Law's sword in amphitheaters and e-learnings.  But also so much speeches about the necessity of a "Compliance culture" which should be instilled to firms, Compliance spousing with joy in an harmony with their "raison d'être" and the historical identity of this group of people which is the company itself through trainings which tell Compliance as a link, an outstretched hand toward those with whom managers want to renew a moral contract in an ethic for which they give the good example. It is not Prohibition anymore but Communication and Community that set the tone of a human dialogue with employees, stakeholders, administration and judges.  It is possible to assume that the former does not exclude the latter, that Training should target all of this, the learning of mandatory prescriptions to follow without discussion but also the adhesion to guidelines, and this because everyone has understood that they are funded. Everything and its contrary, then. "Learning by heart" takes here its full sense: get everyone to remember mechanically in order for no one to misstep (with always more machines which massively teach us the regulatory corpus on our mobile screens) but also succeed in bringing our "heart" in Compliance, thanks to specific training methods (with always smaller groups, with always less public discussions in pleasant places). Everything and its contrary, then. It would be imperative but also sufficient to cumulate. Doing everything. Those who propose training softwares as those who organize conferences, meetings and travels and are favorable to this addition of face-to-face and distancing methods, of mechanic and of human relations. Concretely, at the end companies observe that since the first does not replace the second, costs add up. But, in Compliance, costs constitute a grave default of it, training taking a large part of this default. Managers end up finding the addition too heavy, especially if they thought that training of people is one of the public school's mission and not one of private companies' purpose. Moreover, training to Compliance is not outside Compliance Law, which makes it specific. Indeed, Compliance Law, corpus of Ex Ante mechanisms, targets to concretize "monumental goals". Set by public authorities, these monumental goals are internalized in companies in order for them to implement expected means in order for them to be reached in the future. These monumental goals can be negative (that corruption, money laundering, human rights violations, financial system crisis, etc. shall not occur), or positive (that ecological equilibrium shall be restored, that education shall be supplied, that healthcare shall be provided, etc.). Compliance Law takes as criteria of effectivity for implemented mechanisms, their reality, but also their efficiency, that is their ability to make sure their goal is achieved.Training must achieve its goal. Thus, in Compliance, the purpose is not only the one of every training, that is transmitting a knowledge in order to making the student more learned, but it is to contribute to the "monumental goal" of Compliance Law itself, which is a practical goal and not a scholar goal. For example, training about the applicable rules concerning corruption should have an effect to reduce corruption. And because corruption is itself a part of Compliance Law, in the same way the Regulation Authority can force to educate oneself or train others, the Supervision Authority should control not only the reality but also the effectivity and the efficiency of trainings.  However, the effectivity and the efficiency of Compliance training, because they are full part of Compliance Law, should be controlled by the Authority not only in their reality but also in their concrete ability to participate in the pursued goal. Thus, to keep the example of fight against corruption, training plays in it an essential role because the firm faces an alternative: either a mechanic solution consisting in setting literal interdictions, for example the interdiction to give up a value greater than a certain amount (according to the "anti-gift" rule) with the risk of getting around that every literal prescription offers, or a a solution by training consisting in explaining to everybody that it is wrong to corrupt but that it is acceptable to give samples. Training rather bets on spirit while the machine integrates the letter.  But this refers to the Regulation and Supervision Authority which will appreciate the company due diligences to reach the goals. One observes that, more and more, Authorities economize one step: rather than explain to the companies how educate people that work for them or with them, regulators educate directly.  Is on this point remarkable the "guide" published in 2012, whose second edition of 2019 has been updated in 2020, jointly by the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the financial regulator (Securities &Exchanges Commission – SEC) to know everything about the Foreign Corruption Practices Act (FCPA). Through the explanations offered to everyone of the principles, the reminded definitions, the told cases, they are behaviors prescriptions which are formulated especially for foreign companies by the prosecutor authority and the American sanction authority, allied in this handbook which has such weight that we can consider that it is as valuable as a guideline, soft law creator of Law and rights.  In the concentration of all powers which is often reproached to the Regulator, there is also the magisterium of the teacher, the one who educates stakeholders. After having assumed, on the American model, that the regulator should be the "advocate" of the rules for companies, proving to them the interest  that they have to respect them, it is logical that, in what some have called "Regulation, Act 2" this Regulator's pleading about the good news of Regulation for the firm justifying thus that this one integrates it in Ex Ante was prolonged in magistral lesson: the "regulator-institutor" explains to everybody how using rules for an always still in progress Law ("Better Regulation").  While training was before only peripheral, it is now at the heart. If it is so important, as every other "Compliance tool", it should take what we expect from it. The publications about training most often exhibit what it should be and a sorrowful spirit measures what sometimes appears as a huge gap between descriptions and realities sometimes reported.  Educating being without any doubt one of the most difficult actions, we should probably neither describe a paradise of maieutics nor write a hot paper against what already has  the merit to exist, but list what we can expect from Training mechanisms when they apply to Compliance, because here, rather more than for the other tools, it is a mean obligation. Which content should have a training ? (I). Because Compliance Law targets training as one of the mean to reach "monumental goals" which constitutes the substantial heart of this branch of Law, the training dimension is not limited to stamped training, finding back this pedagogical dimension in almost all the other tools (II). In that, Training appears as the alpha and the omega of Compliance.    

🌐follow Marie-Anne Frison-Roche on LinkedIn 🌐subscribe to the Newsletter MAFR Regulation, Compliance, Law  - ► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, The dreamed Compliance Law, Working Paper, June 2020.  - This Working Paper, "The Dreamed Compliance Law", is the basis for an article, written in French, "La compliance" (Compliance), inserted in the collective work to be published under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Racine, Le Droit économique du XXIème siècle (The XXIe century Economic Law , in the Serie Droit & Economie,   Lextenso – LGDJ, 2020. -   No one can know what the Law of the 21st century will be. Pretending to know it is just not to realize its ignorance. Why then writing about it, since the future is always surprising? One can only write about the unknown part of the Law of tomorrow. If the future is then modeled on what was written, so much the better for the prophet, a tribute that can, for example, be paid to Pierre Godé¹Mélanges Pierre Godé, off-trade book, 2019.  who described in 1999 what was going to be 10 years later "Law of the future" constituted by Environmental Law²Godé, P., Le Droit de l'avenir (Un Droit en devenir), 1999. . If the future denies the author or if its contours in no way follow the lines of the written word, this is not serious since the writing of the Law, even if it has the specificity of being partly prescriptive in that it has the power to write the future, a normative pen that rounds up letters³It is in particular the idea of the movement of analysis of Law & Literature which poses that by telling the past in one way or another, by thus inventing it, Law, and in particular the Judge, invents the future and being written, creates it. On this movement which was powerful in the United States, v. Cabrillac, R. et Frison-Roche, M.-A., Droit et Littérature, à paraître. , it participates in all writing: above all to be that of a dream. Lévi-Strauss argued that teaching is defined as dreaming out loud. Teaching and describing the Law of a century that we will never know gives even more freedom to dream about it. This freedom increases when the object is a branch of Law in the process of being born, state of the stammering "Compliance Law" of which some still maintain, as it was made for Regulation Law, that there is not existing. The hand can then, as it pleases, trace its beautiful or hideous features: what face will Compliance Law have, as soon as we assume that it will exist? It may as well be a nightmare (I) as a happy dream (II). It is up to us to choose in which category this branch of Law will flourish. Because what we can be sure of is this fulfillment. It is certainly already taking sides to presuppose the very existence of Compliance Law. Not only to consider it possibility with hostility because to be an enemy of something or someone is already to recognize their existence. Before that, two objections radically block the very existence of Compliance Law and their shadow remains in the future of it⁴See infra I. Compliance Law as nightmarish octopus. . Firstly, it is said that Compliance does not come under Law, but for example only ethics since it would consist in keeping well in companies which care about the interest of others or the planet, for example by spontaneous care of the environment; Compliance being a crystallization of social responsibility, the one for which we have our conscience, we express our "raison d'être" and we are not accountable⁵On the fact that "social responsibility" makes it possible not to be legally responsible, cf. Supiot, A., Du nouveau au self-service normatif: la responsabilité sociale des entreprises, 2004; this is not the subject of this article and this question will not be developed here.. Or it would consist in technologically putting in place tools for capturing technical information using data storage and processing methods. Compliance is then a sub-category of "Data Regulation"!⁶See, for instance, ..., Replace Regulation by norm by Regulation by Data, 2020. , a mechanical concept in which Law is no more present. In these two perspectives, Compliance Law cannot exist, no more tomorrow than it would exist today. These two radical conceptions, completely entrusting Compliance mechanisms to everyone except lawyers, do not make sense because it suffices to note the development of judgments and laws to measure the legal phenomenon already present⁷See, for instance, Frison-Roche, M.-A., Compliance Law (monography), 2016 ; Compliance Law, 2020. . Second, there would be many Compliance mechanisms but insufficient to constitute a branch of Law. Indeed we would find Compliance in Company Law, Labor Law, Financial Law, Banking Law, Criminal Law, Administrative Law, European Law, International Law, etc. These classic branches, which have been formed for so long, depending on the point of view adopted, would gain in modernity or be threatened with decay by this kind of extension which will be Compliance. There would thus be as many "little legal sectoral rules" as there are branches of law. These new internal developments would be like a new bud, on which care should be taken – if the tree regains its strength – or a weed to be eradicated – if the French garden loses its perspective. Thus the matter being scattered as many as specialist lawyers, often criminalists or specialists in banking and Financial Law, then tomorrow all specialists in all branches of Law, this could constitute the most radical obstacle to the constitution of Compliance Law. Indeed, we would come back to confuse Compliance and the "modernization" of Law itself as a whole, since it would only be a question of perfecting each of the classic branches of the legal system. If we keep in this half-sleep that is any projection in the future the hope of a constituted branch of Law, we must discard these two perspectives of annihilation, either in the total absence of Law or in recovery by all Law. To dismiss the sorrowful spirits who see no future in Compliance and keep only its enemies in the space of this article, let us assume that Compliance Law will exist in the 21st century. In what form and by what means, in the palm of which institutions, in the shadow of which legal system? Since it is a question of projecting ourselves onto the black screen of our nights of dreamy lawyers, let us take the current state only as a trailer. Like the one developed by the genius who by the contempt not only brought down into the flames of hell the cinema which has become a consumer industry with which producers force-feed us but offered us the vision of its future. What is what we see today the trailer? We let our imagination run wild since the trailer films are autonomous works compared to the film which follows them. We have no idea what will happen and what we are watching from the brief and violent current images of Compliance Law, the cinema of which rather makes a hero of the whistleblower⁸On what the cinema does with the whistleblower, with the availability of trailers and extracts from the films, see Frison-Roche, M.-A., introduction of the article The impossible unicity of the legal category of whistleblowers, 2019.  and a character of the narrow and ridiculous importance of the compliance officer⁹Frison-Roche, M.-A., ... (retrouver sur LinkedIn). , does little to help us. But if we force the features of the present lineaments, the alternative of this Law in childhood is therefore that of a nightmare (I) or an idyllic solution for difficulties that will increase (II). Everything will depend on the concept that we will retain of Compliance Law. Because the script is not written, because Compliance Law is a Law with a political dimension, that it is defined by the ambitions that we can claim to have by setting monumental goals that we are going to achieve, a claim that will make it one major branch of the Law of tomorrow, or we can abandon any claim, lower our heads and arms, and reject any claim. It is then that the power of Compliance Law, which will be no less great, will turn against us, human beings, as in a nightmare.  

Full reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., L'impossible unicité juridique de la catégorie des "lanceurs d'alertes" ("The impossible legal unicity of the category of "whistleblowers""), in Chacornac, J. (dir.), Lanceurs d'alertes, regards comparatistes, ("Whistleblowers, comparative perspectives"), Publications of the Centre français de droit comparé ("French Comparative Law Center"), May 2020, Volume 21, pp. 13-31.    Read the article (in French).    Read the general presentation of the collective book in which this article is published Read the bilingual working paper which had served of basis for this article.  Read the presentation of the conference "Les lanceurs d'alertes: glose" (Whistleblowers: glose") and especially the slides elabored for the colloquium organized by the Centre français de droit comparé ("French Comparative Law Center") on 23th of November 2018 under the direction of Jérôme Chacornac - Introduction of the article "Whistleblowers". This is a new expression. Which is a great success. Barely heard once, we hear it everywhere … A topic not of course or knowledge test, but rather a topic of daily conversation. Because it is spoken to us every day, in more or less gracious terms. For example President Donald Trump on October 1, 2019 declared to the press "want to question" the whistleblower who would have illegally denounced him and would not, according to him, have the right to conceal his identity, proof in this according to him of the lying character of his assertions against him, while his lawyer indicates on October 6, 2019 that he is not speaking on behalf of a single whistleblower thus taken to task but of a plurality of people who gave information against the President of the United States. Even the most imaginative screenwriters would not have written such brutal and rapid twists and turns. Spectators, we are waiting for the next episode, secretly hoping for the escalation. And precisely if we go to the cinema, it is still a whistleblower whose dedication and success, we are told about, even the drama, for the benefit of global society, and in particular democracy, since the secrets are fought for the benefit of the truth. The Secret Man designates Mark Felt as the first whistleblower. Returning to what we often present as being a more "serious" media¹On the more general fact that cinema is undoubtedly the medium which most seriously restores the state of the Law, c. Frison-Roche, M.-A., Au coeur du Droit, du cinéma et de la famille : la vie, 2016., we listen to France-Culture and here is another story told by a historian who worked as an archivist on events that political power would have liked to keep hidden by possibly destroying their traces but which its trade led to preserve: here it is expressly presented to the studious listeners like a "whistleblower" …. While the same radio tries to find the one who could well be, as in a kind of contest the "first whistleblower"²L'histoire du premier lanceur d'alerte, France Culture, septembre 2019. ? …. This rewriting of History can be defended because ultimately what did other Voltaire do for Calas, or Zola for Dreyfus? It is also a subject of legislative discussion since in the United States the Dodd-Frank law of 2010 inserted in the law of 1934 which established the Securities & Exchanges Commission a complete device of remuneration and remuneration of the whistleblowers, whereas after having developed flexible but guiding lines in this regard in 2012³European Commission, Guidelines on Whistleblowing, 6 of December 2012, SEC(2012) 679 final, updated on 23 of April 2018. , the European Commission published on November 20, 2018 the text of what will become a Directive intended to give a unified European status to the character, in the system gradually developed to protect the one who was presented in 2018 as that "cannot be punished for having done what is right". In Europe, the Directive first approved by a Resolution of the European Parliament on April 16, 2019 on the protection of persons denouncing breaches of Union Law and then adopted on October 7, 2019 (Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council of European Union on the Protection of Persons who Report Violations of European Union Law, different title, it should be noted, will have to be transposed into the laws of the Member States within the next two years. , since only "violations of Union Law" are targeted, but the character of the "whistleblower" is more generally targeted: he is "whole"⁴However, precisely the so common use of plurality ("whistleblowers") raises doubts about the uniqueness of the character. On this question, see. all the first part of the developments of this study, which leads to the conclusion rather than beyond the multitude of particular cases, there are rather two kinds of whistleblowers. V. infra I.. In short, the whistleblower is a star⁵The director of the film La fille de Brest says that she considers the whistleblower at the origin of the case of the Pick as a "movie character".. A sort of historical figure, covered in blows and glory, going from Voltaire to Snowden, both of whom find themselves embodied on the screens⁶Thus, the adventures of Snowden were brought to the screen by Oliver Stone in 2016, Snowden. On the question of knowing whether this film "faithfully reproduces" or not the case, Schetizer, P., Le film Snowden est-il à la hauteur de la réalité?, 2017. This article is favorable to the whistleblower, and to the film which tells us with emotion his case, in particular because (sic), it is easier than to read the Washington Post. …., Consecrated by law, which associates with it a legal regime of protection to such an extent that, like a Nessus tunic, it is this legal regime which will define the character and not the reverse. When we read the law of December 9, 2016 relating to transparency in the fight against corruption and the modernization of economic life, known as "Sapin 2", we notice that the Legislator makes much of this character, since 'he dedicates its chapter II to him⁷Underlined by us.: "From the protection of whistleblowers", and that it is by his very protection that he formally opens the door of Right to him. But why a plural? Admittedly when we read the recitals of the Community Directive of October 7, 2019 on the protection of whistleblowers⁸About this directive, v. the developments infra, it is only a list of all the subjects on which it is a good idea to protect them, which therefore prompts us to see in this plural only the index of this non-exhaustive list of subjects which it is good to tell us, a sign of the lack of definition of who should alert us. Reading the French law known as "Sapin 2" makes it less severe but more perplexing. Indeed, this plurality referred to by the title of the chapter devoted to "whistleblowers", there is no longer any question in the rest of the law, in the very definition which follows, article 6 which opens this chapter devoted to "whistleblowers" offering the reader immediately a singular since it begins as follows: "A⁹Underlined by us. whistleblower is a person …". No mention of diversity. The art of legislative writing would however have required that the qualifying article not only be singular but that it should not yet be undefined. Stendhal if he had still deigned to have the law for bedside book would have wanted to find at the beginning of chapter a sentence like: "The¹⁰Underlined by us. whistleblower is a person …". Thus seem to contradict themselves within the law "Sapin 2 the very title which presents the character, in that it uses a defined plural (the) while the defining article which presents it is in the undefined singular (one). … Here is a first reason not to advance any more but in a very careful way, in this "step by step" that constitutes a reading word for word: a gloss. This consists of taking the expression itself literally. The second reason for this technical choice is that the gloss is well suited to the introduction of a collective work, thus allowing more targeted developments to take place in other contributions, on the techniques, the difficulties and the limits of this protection, or on its history, or the reasons for the arrival in French law of these whistleblowers and the way they develop, or not, elsewhere. I am therefore going to content myself with taking this already legal expression to the letter: The (I) whistle (III). blowers (II).