Consent

► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, "Obligation sur Obligation vaut" ("Obligation upon obligation work"), in M.-A. Frison-Roche (dir.), L'Obligation de Compliance, Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Dalloz, coll. "Régulations & Compliance", 2025, pp. 324-354. - 📝read the article - 🚧read the bilingual Working Paper on the basis this article has been written, with more developments, technical references and hyperlinks - 📕read the general presentation of the book, L'Obligation de Compliance, in which this article is published 📚see the general presentation of the series "Régulations & Compliance" in which this book is published - ► English Summary of this contribution: The demonstration of the part played by Will in the Compliance Obligation incumbent on companies is based on the distinction and articulation between the Regulatory Legal Obligation and the spontaneous Obligation of companies, in the use that companies make of their will to implement their Regulatory Legal Obligation and the use that they make of it to produce even new ambitions. This is why the demonstration is carried out in 3 stages. The first part of the demonstration consists in finding the part played by the free will of companies in their Compliance Obligation by putting an end to two confusions: the first, which, within the Contract and Tort Law itself but also within Compliance Law, splits up and confuses "free will" and "consent", which would no longer require freely expressed acceptance; the second, which, specific to Compliance Law, confuses "Compliance" and "conformity", reducing the former to mechanical obedience, which would exclude any free will. Having clarified this, the rest of this study focuses on the 2 ways in which a company subject to a Compliance Obligation by regulations expresses a part of its free will, which the study expresses in this proposed adage: Obligation upon Obligation is valid, since the regulatory legal obligation to which the company responds by the obedience owed by all those subject to the Law may be superimposed by its free will, which will then oblige it. The first case of Obligation upon Obligation, studied in a second part, concerns the means by which the Regulatory Legal Compliance Obligation is implemented, the company subject to the Monumental Goals set by the Law remaining free to choose the means by which it will contribute to achieving them. Its free will will thus be exercised over the choice and implementation of the means. This can take two legal forms: contracts on the one hand and "commitments" on the other. Thirdly, the second case of Obligation upon Obligation, which is more radical, is that in which, in addition to Compliance's regulatory legal Obligation, the company draws on its free will to repeat the terms of its regulatory legal Obligation (because it is prohibited from contradicting it), a repetition which can be far-reaching, because the legal nature (and therefore the legal regime) is changed. The judgment handed down by the The Hague Court of Appeal on 12 November 2024, in the case law Shell, illustrates this. What is more, the free will of the company can play its part in the Compliance Obligation by increasing the Compliance Obligation. This is where the alliance is strongest. The interpretation of the specific obligations that result must remain that of the Monumental Goals in a teleological application that gives coherence to the whole. - 🌐follow Marie-Anne Frison-Roche on LinkedIn 🌐follow Marie-Anne Frison-Roche on Instagram 🌐subscribe to the Newsletter MAFR Regulation, Compliance, Law 🌐subscribe to the Video Newsletter MAFR Surplomb 🌐subscribe to the Newsletter MaFR Droit & Art

► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, "GPA : "L’interdiction de la GPA posée par le Code civil n’existe plus" ("The French Civil Code ban on surrogacy no longer exists"), interview with Olivia Dufour, Actu-Juridique, 26 November 2024 - 💬read the interview (in French) - ► Presentation of the interview by the journal: "Un simple arrêt de section rendu par la première civile de la Cour de cassation le 14 novembre 2024 peut-il donner plein effet à une "pure convention de GPA" ? Telle est la question que l’on peut se poser à la suite de cette décision. Éléments de réponse avec le professeur Marie-Anne Frison-Roche. ". - 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📕GPA : dire Oui ou dire Non, 2018 - ► Questions posées, réponses apportées :  Actu-Juridique. Question : Un arrêt de section de la première chambre civile de la Cour de cassation rendu le 14 novembre dernier en matière de gestation pour autrui (GPA) a suscité l’émotion. Est-il exact de dire qu’en pratique, suite à cette décision, la prohibition en France de la GPA n’existe plus ?   Marie-Anne Frison-Roche. Réponse. :    A.J. Q. : Quels étaient les faits de l’espèce et en quoi diffèrent-ils des autres affaires ? MaFR. R. : O A.J. Q. : L’Europe avait-elle déjà pris position sur la GPA et si oui, par quels textes et dans quel sens ? MaFR. R. : En Europe, c'est la jurisprudence de la CEDH qui en 2014 (arrêts Mennesson) est venu briser la jurisprudence française pour imposer que la filiation de l'enfant né d'une GPA réalisée à l'étranger dans un pays où la GPA est licite puisse être établie à l'égard du père dont les gamètes avaient été utilisées. Il ne restait plus alors qu'à procéder à l'adoption par le conjoint de celui-ci. La législation interne ne fût pas pour autant modifiée mais le fonctionnement de l'état-civil permet de rendre inefficace la prohibition. Mais c'était à la fois dire Non et Oui… L'enjeu fût donc de modifier les textes, soit pour exclure la GPA plus fortement, soit pour l'admettre plus ouvertement.   A.J. Q. : En quoi la technique juridique utilisée pour faire reconnaître cette GPA en France était-elle différente de ce que l’on connait usuellement ? MaFR. R. : C   A.J. Q. : Quelle est la portée de cet arrêt ? MaFR. R. : I   A.J. Q. : Qu’en est-il du rapport avec l’adoption ? MaFR. R. : S   A.J. Q. : Le rapporteur n’a-t-il pas évoqué une possibilité de déguiser une adoption illicite à l’étranger sous une GPA ? MaFR. R. : S - 🌐follow Marie-Anne Frison-Roche on LinkedIn 🌐follow Marie-Anne Frison-Roche on Instagram 🌐subscribe to the Newsletter MAFR Regulation, Compliance, Law 🌐subscribe to the Newsletter Surplomb, par MAFR

► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, The role of will in the Compliance Obligation: Obligation upon Obligation is valid and useful, Working Paper, June 2023. - 🎤  This working paper was originally drawn up as a basis for the talk, Obligation on Obligation is worth, on the first day of the conference I co-organised:🧮Compliance : Obligation, devoir, pouvoir, culture (Compliance: Obligation, duty, power, culture), on 13 June 2023. - It was subsequently used as the basis for a forthcoming article: 📝La part de la volonté dans l’obligation de compliance : Obligation sur Obligation vaut". in📕L'obligation de compliance, in the collection 📚Régulations & Compliance 📝The role of will in the Compliance Obligation: Obligation upon Obligation is valid and useful, in📘Compliance Obligation, in the collection 📚Compliance & Regulation - ► Summary of this Working Paper: The demonstration of the part played by the entreprises' Will in the Compliance Obligation incumbent on them is carried out in 3 stages. The first stage of the demonstration consists in finding the part played by the free will of companies in their Compliance Obligation by putting an end to two confusions: the first which, within the Law of Contract and Tort itself but also within Compliance Law, splits and confuses "free will" and "consent", which would no longer require freely expressed acceptance; the second, specific to Compliance Law, which confuses "Compliance" and "conformity", reducing the former to mechanical obedience which could exclude any free Will. Having clarified this, the rest of the study focuses on the 2 ways in which a company subject to a Compliance Obligation by compulsory regulations expresses a part of its free Will, which the study expresses in this proposed adage: Obligation upon Obligation is valid, since the legal obligation to which the company responds by the obedience owed by all those subject to the regulations may be superimposed by its free Will, which will then oblige it. The first case of Obligation upon Obligation, studied in a second part, concerns the means by which the compulsory Compliance Obligation is implemented, the company subject to the Monumental Goals set by the Legislator remaining free to choose the means by which the company will contribute to achieving them. Its free Will will thus be exercised over the choice and implementation of the means. This can take two legal forms: Contracts on the one hand and "Commitments" on the other. In the third part, the second case of Obligation upon Obligation, which is more radical, is that in which, in addition to Compliance's legal compulsory Obligation, the company draws on its free Will to repeat the terms of its legal Obligation (because it is prohibited from contradicting it), a repetition which can be far-reaching, because the legal nature (and therefore the legal regime) is changed. The judgment handed down by the The Hague Court of Appeal on 12 November 2024, in the so-called Shell case, illustrates this. What is more, the company's free Will can play its part in the Compliance Obligation by increasing the legal Obligation. This is where the alliance is strongest. The interpretation of the specific and diverses obligations that result must remain that of the Monumental Goals in a teleological application that gives coherence to the whole. - 🔓read the developments below⤵️ - 🌐follow Marie-Anne Frison-Roche on LinkedIn 🌐follow Marie-Anne Frison-Roche on Instagram 🌐subscribe to the Newsletter MAFR Regulation, Compliance, Law  🌐subscribe to the Video Newsletter MAFR Surplomb

🌐 follow Marie-Anne Frison-Roche on LinkedIn 🌐 subscribe to the Newsletter MAFR Regulation, Compliance, Law  - ► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, Compliance contract, compliance clauses, working paper, September 2022. - ►Summary of this working paper:  Compliance Law has multiplied obligations. However, although Tort Law is emerging in Compliance issues and contracts are multiplying in practice, for the moment the relationship between Compliance Law and Contract Law is not very visible (I). However, there are contracts whose sole purpose is to give concrete form to Compliance, which creates a specific contract and must influence its implementation (II). Moreover, there is much to learn from the diversity of compliance stipulations scattered throughout a wide range of contracts (III). - 🔓read the developments below⤵️

►  An article published on July 14, 2021 by The Wall Street Journal, "Brain Implant Lets Man 'Speak' After Being Silent for More Than a Decade", relays the information that it is now possible, on an experimental basis, to implant in the brain a device allowing a person deprived by a neurological accident to speak to be able to express himself again by writing his thoughts directly on a computer screen, on which the words thought are displayed in sentences. - Several years of "fundamental" research, notably on the part of Facebook, which, in particular by subsidizing the French professor of neurosciences Stanislas Dehaene, in a comparison between the learning development of the brain and the development of "deep learning", have been successful. to allow people who have lost the use of the voice to write directly on screens without this vocal medium by going directly from thought to writing. This leads to three reflections, putting Law and Technology at the center: 1. at first glance, speech being only a medium between thought and expression, it would be conceivable to do without it; 2. However, it is required to draw a parallel with the new technology of "emotional recognition" by which thoughts are accessible to third parties, which thwarts the fundamental right to make one's thoughts inaccessible to others;  The news has shown precisely that this technology, making possible to capture the true thoughts of others despite feigned facial expressions, poses a problem with regard to the fundamental right to lie or to remain silent (see in this regard 📧 MaFR, "Compliance and Ethics Technologies may be inadmissible "in themselves" and conceiving of their "ethical use" is therefore not admissible: practical case on the control of workers' emotions "). 3. By anticipating the possible use of this new technology and the legal reaction to this potentiality, the same question raises whether, per se, such an implantation of a tool for "capturing thoughts directly in the brain" to obtain their "direct translation on a screen" should not be considered as the equivalent of capturing thoughts, just as infringing on everyone's fundamental right to keep their thoughts inaccessible. Here again, the fact that in one or two cases, this made it possible to cure a person does not legitimize the technology in itself. Likewise, the fact that the person "consents" is not sufficient to legitimize what may be a per se attack on the dignity of the human person if the technology has the effect of capturing thoughts with a loss of control. the person concerned. For the moment, in the description given by the researchers according to the article which relates the innovation, it is the transmitter who controls the technology but the elimination of the medium of speech or writing deserves to be conceptualized, in the loss of isolation of the individual, isolation to which the Western tradition has often associated Freedom. - ► s'inscrire à la Newsletter MaFR ComplianceTech®

► An article from March 3, 2021, Smile for the camera: the dark side of China's emotion-recognition tech, then an article from June 16, 2021, "Every smile you fake" – an AI emotion – recognition system can assess how "happy" China's workers are in the office describes how a new technology of emotional recognition is able, through what will soon be out of fashion to call "facial recognition", to distinguish a smile that reflects a mind state of real satisfaction from a smile which does not correspond to it. This allows the employer to measure the suitability of the human being for his or her work. It is promised that it will be used in an ethical way, to improve well-being at work. But isn't it in itself that this technology is incompatible with any compensation through ethical support? The technology developed by a Chinese technology company and acquired by other Chinese companies with many employees, allows to have information on the actual state of mind of the person through and beyond his or her facial expressions and bodily behavior. Previously, the technology of emotional recognition had been developed to ensure security, by fighting against people with hostile plans, public authorities using it for example in the controls at airports to detect the criminal plans which some passengers could have. It is now affirmed that it is not about fighting against some evil people ("dangerousness") to protect the group before the act is committed ("social defense”) but that it is about helping all workers. Indeed, the use that will be made of it will be ethical, because first the people who work for these Chinese companies with global activity, like Huawaï, do it freely and have accepted the operation of these artificial intelligence tools (which is not the case with people who travel, control being then a kind of necessary evil that they do not have to accept, which is imposed on them for the protection of the group), but even and above all, the purpose is itself ethical: if it turns out that the person does not feel well at work, that they are not happy there, even before they are perhaps aware, the company can assist. Let’s take this practical case from the perspective of Law and let’s imagine that it is contested before a judge applying the principles of Western Law. Would this be acceptable? No, and for three reasons. 1. An "ethical use" cannot justify an unethical process in itself 2. The first freedoms are negative 3. "Consent" should not be the only principle governing the technological and digital space   I. AN "ETHICAL USE" CAN NEVER LEGITIMATE AN UNETHICAL PROCESS IN ITSELF These unethical processes in themselves cannot be made "acceptable" by an "ethical use" which will be made of them. This principle was especially reminded by Sylviane Agacinski in bioethics: if one cannot dispose of another through a disposition of his or her body which makes his or her very person available (see not. Agacinski, S., ➡️📗Le tiers-corps. Réflexions sur le don d’organes, 2018). Except to make the person reduced to the thing that his or her body is, which is not ethically admissible in itself, that is excluded, and Law is there in order to this is not possible. This is even why the legal notion of "person", which is not a notion that goes without saying, which is a notion built by Western thought, acts as a bulwark so that human beings cannot be fully available to others, for example by placing their bodies on the market (see Frison-Roche, M.-A., ➡️📝To protect human beings, the ethical imperative of the legal notion of person, 2018). This is why, for example, as Sylviane Agacinski emphasizes, there is no ethical slavery (a slave who cannot be beaten, who must be well fed, etc.). That the human being agrees ("and what about if it pleases me to be beaten?") does not change anything.   II. THE FIRST FREEDOM IS THE ONE TO SAY NO, FOR EXAMPLE BY REFUSING TO REVEAL YOUR EMOTIONS: FOR EXAMPLE HIDING IF YOU ARE HAPPY OR NOT TO WORK The first freedom is not positive (being free to say Yes); it is negative (being free to say No). For example, the freedom of marriage is having the freedom not to marry before having the freedom to marry: if one does not have the freedom not to marry, then the freedom to marry loses any value. Likewise, the freedom to contract implies the freedom not to contract, etc. Thus, freedom in the company can take the form of freedom of speech, which allows people, according to procedures established by Law, to express their emotions, for example their anger or their disapproval, through the strike. But this freedom of speech, which is a positive freedom, has no value unless the worker has the fundamental freedom not to express his or her emotions. For example if he or she is not happy with his or her job, because he or she does not appreciate what he or she does, or he or she does not like the place where he or she works, or he or she does not like people with whom he or she works, his or her freedom of speech demands that he or she have the right not to express it. If the employer has a tool that allows him or her to obtain information about what the worker likes and dislikes, then the employee loses this first freedom. In the Western legal order, we must be able to consider that it is at the constitutional level that the infringement is carried out through Law of Persons (on the intimacy between the Law of Persons and the Constitutional Law, see Marais , A., ➡️📕Le Droit des personnes, 2021).   III. CONSENT SHOULD NOT BE THE ONLY PRINCIPLE GOVERNING THE TECHNOLOGICAL AND DIGITAL SPACE   We could consider that the case of the company is different from the case of the controls operated by the State for the monitoring of airports, because in the first case observed people are consenting. "Consent" is today the central notion, often presented as the future of what everyone wants: the "regulation" of technology, especially when it takes the form of algorithms ("artificial intelligence"), especially in digital space. "Consent" would allow "ethical use" and could establish the whole (on these issues, see Frison-Roche, M.-A., ➡️📝Having a good behavior in the digital space, 2019). "Consent" is a notion from which Law is today moving away in Law of Persons, in particular as regards the "consent" given by adolescents on the availability of their body, but not yet on digital. No doubt because in Contract Law, "consent" is almost synonymous with "free will", whereas they must be distinguished (see Frison-Roche, M.-A., ➡️📝Remarques sur la distinction entre la volonté et le consentement en Droit des contrats, 1995). But we see through this case, which precisely takes place in China, that "consent" is in Law as elsewhere a sign of submission. It is only in a probative way that it can constitute proof of a free will; this proof must not turn into an irrebuttable presumption. The Data Regulatory Authorities (for example in France the CNIL) seek to reconstitute this probative link between "consent" and "freedom to say No" so that technology does not allow by "mechanical consents", cut off from any connection with the principle of freedom which protects human beings, from dispossessing themselves (see Frison-Roche, M.-A., Yes to the principle of will, No to pure consents, 2018). The more the notion of consent will be peripheral, the more human beings will be able to be active and protected. -

Experience shows that in the digital the legal technique of consent is not protective enough.   If only because a simplest technology neutralizes the link that should exist between the "consent" of the user and the "free will" of the latter: the consent of the user only protects the latter to the extent that this one can in Law and in fact to say "no.     I. THE EXPERIENCE    For example I found on my Facebook New an access to an unknown web site which puts online an article on "the rights of trees" … I go. In accordance with the European Regulation (GDPR) transposed into French legal system, the site informs that there is possibility for the user to accept or refuse the use of their personal data for the benefit of "partners". If they continue reading, the user is supposed to accept everything, but they can click to "customize". I click: there I find two options: "accept everything" or "reject everything". But the "reject all" option is disabled. It is only possible to click on the "accept all" option.   It is also possible, because the law obliges, to consult the list of the partners of this website: I click and find a list of unknown companies, with foreign denominations, which without doubt once will collect my personal data (and those of my contacts) , having their own head office outside the European Union. It is stated in a text, which can not be copied, that these "partners" can use my data without my consent and for purposes that they do not have to inform me. But, again, these things I can "refuse everything". Here again the "reject all" mention exists but the fonctionality is not active, while the mention "accept all" is an active fonctionality.   As I can not refuse (since it's disabled), and as 99% of Internet users have never clicked on the first two buttons, all their data has been fed into the data market that allows the targeting of products that spill out in the digital space, to their detriment and that of their contact. While believing to read a free article on the "right of the trees". At the end, I do not read this article, since I did not click on the only active buttons: "accept everything".   In more than 50% of cases, the "reject all" or "customize" options are only images but are not active. And data absorption is also about contacts. In exchange for a whimsical article about trees and their rights, or creams to be always young, or celebrities who change spouses, or about so-called tests to find what king or queen you should be if the all recognized all your merits, etc. Proposed on the digital news feed by unknown sites; in partnership with foreign companies that you will never reach. And mass-viewed by Internet users who are also told that "consent" is the proven solution for effective protection …. While these are just panels hastily built by new Potemkins …   II. WHAT TO DO ?    1. Not be satisfied with "consent" from the moment that it is a mechanism that may not be the expression of a free will: how could it be if the option "to refuse" is not active?   2. The link between will and consent must therefore be "presumed" only in a simple presumption and in a non-irrefutable way, because we must refuse to live in a dehumanized society, operating on "mechanical consents", to which the digital does not lead necessarily.   3. Entrust by the Compliance Law to the "crucial digital operators" (in the case of Facebook thanks to which these proposals for free reading are made on the thread of news of the Net surfers) the care to verify in Ex Ante the effectiveness of the link between Will and Consent: Here and concretely the possibility for the user to read while refusing the capture of all its data (for the benefit of operators who do not even have the concrete obligation to give the information of the use that will be made of these personal data).   -

► Complete reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., Yes to the principle of the will, No to the pure consents, working document for an article written in French Oui au principe de volonté, Non aux consentements purs, to Mélanges dedicated to Pierre Godé, 2018, available at #lien192 en / article / yes-in-principle-of-the-desire-not in the consent /   ► Summary: Pierre Godé devoted his thesis to defend the freedom of the human being, freedom that the person exercises by showing his will. This will manifests itself, even tacitly, by this trace of "consent". In a liberal society, politically and economically, that is to say a society based on the principle of the will of the person, consent must always be defined as the manifestation of the will, this link between consent and will being indivisible ( I). But by a perversion of liberalism, "consent" has become an autonomous object of the freedom of the person, mechanical consent that has made it possible to transform human beings into machines, machines to desire  and machines to be desired, in a world of " pure consents","where we keep clicking, consenting to all without ever wanting. This consent, which has been split from the free will of the person, is the basis of the markets of the Human and the illiberal democracies, threats against human beings (II). The future of Law, in which Pierre Godé believed, is to continue to aspire to protect the human being and, without countering the free will of the human being as the movement of the law of the consumption had been tempted to, to renew with a liberal movement of Law and to fight against these systems of pure consents (III).   🔻read the article below (in French).

►   This working document was intended to serve as a support for a conference pronounced in French in the conference Droit et Ethique ( Law & Ethics) of May 31, 2018 in a symposium organized by the Court of Cassation and the Association Française de Philosophie du Droit.  French Association of Philosophy of Law on the general theme Law & Ethics. See a general presentation of this conference.  Rather, it has served as a support for the article to be published in the Archives de Philosophie du Droit (APD). This article is written in French.    ►   Summary: It is through the Law that the human being has acquired a unity in the West (I). What religion could have done, the Law also did by posing on each human being the indetachable notion of him of "person" (I.A). But this is what is challenged today, not the personality and the power that the human being has to express his freedom but the unity that implies in the disposition that we have of ourselves in repelling the desire that others have always had to dispose of us. Current law tends to "pulverize" human beings into data and transform into neutral legal services what was considered before as the devouring of others. The legal concept of "consent", ceasing to be proof of a free will but becoming an autonomous concept, would suffice (I.B.). To prevent the reigning of the "law of desires", which merely reflects the adjustment of forces, we must demand here and now the ethical sovereignty of Law, because Law can not be just just be just the interests adjustment (II). We can form this request if we do not want to live in an a-moral universe (II.A), if we see that the unity of the person is the legal invention that protects the weak human being (II.B.). If we admit this imperative, then we must finally ask who in the legal system will express and impose it, especially the legislator or the judge, because we seem to have lost the ability to recall this principle of the Person on which the West was so centered. But the principles that are no longer said disappear. There would then remain only the case-by-case adjustment of interests between human beings in the world field of particular forces. At this yardstick, Law would be more than a technique of securisation of particular adjustments. Law would be reduced at that and would have lost its link with Ethics. (II.C). .