Law and Literature

► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, "Discussion" ("Discussion"), in E. Renaud & L. Turcat (dir.), Regards sur la justice, 10ième séance, École normale supérieure (ENS), Paris, Salle Dussane, 45 rue d’Ulm, 75005 Paris, April 24, 2024 - 🧮See the full programme of this event - ► Presentation of the conférence:  - 🌐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., Questionnaire de Proust (Proust's Quiz), in Droit & Littérature, n°5, pp. 37-38, Lextenso, 2021. The chosen topic for this volume is Proust.    Read (in French)   See its presentation on LinkedIn (in French)

🌐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.  

I propose to reflect on how the legal system requires companies to take into account the interests of those who aren't shareholders, for example the interests of employees and even the interests of those who don't yet exist, for example the interests of future generations, or interests that are traceable to group interests, for example the interests of "minorities" or interest that can't be attached to anyone in particular, such as interest of the Planet. It's like in the fairy tales. Dream or nightmare. The future will tell. The evolution of the law can be presented in three parts as souvenirs or wishes Christmas, which remain under each other like so many open roads choices and decisions for legislators and judges. Let slip into the clothes of the legendary usurer and talk about the first ghost of the three Christmas that made him famous: "Christmas past." At a time when the company built on the partnership agreement served the interests of the shareholders, the French judicial courts had  taken into account the interests of employees and the interest of the environment by Tort Law. The generality of this branch of law has allowed such judicial policy. It was much easier to build than Procedural Law opened the doors of the courthouse, for example by allowing works commitees to access the court for an expert analyse, to make their voices heard in moments of transformation of the company. The evolution of Law in favor of stakeholders has therefore taken form Ex post but in an imperative way. The "Christmas Present" comes from Financial Law. Influenced by economic thinking. A French author could say he prefers no translate "skateholders" because French Corporate Law is influenced directly be this economic theory now¹Trebulle, F.-G., Stakeholders Theory et droit des sociétés, 2006. He wrote that the French translation of "stakeholders" by "parties prenantes" is not convincing and prefers to keep the original term..  Laws require listed companies they and they alone to inform the market about what they have done and will do spontaneously in favor of employees, "minorities", diversity policy or the environment, and probably more generally in favor of the social group and the planet. These recent laws aren't prescriptive : they oblige to inform. By an feedback effect, they are an incentive for responsible investors, responsible shareholders, Legislator hoping that the company is rationally selfishness for "well" performing towards stakeholders at the end of the day. There are no legal sanctions, the European Commission referring to self-regulation. Calculation or ethical share the causal role, an issue to which the law doesn't lend relevance.   The "Christmas yet to come" is already showing its premises. An author writes Corporate Social Responsibity is "irresistible"²Malecki, C., L'irrésistible montée en puissance de la RSE : les impulsions européennes et françaises de l'année 2013,  2013.This article begins by : "Toujours plus ! (Always more!)".… It will be to turn these legal standards of information into legal norms with binding effect: laws require companies, not just listed companies but everyone to take into account the interests of employees, "minorities", environmental issues and future generations. Not only to inform what is done, but to oblige to do.This is the challenge, for example, the composition of the boards, or more radically the rewriting of Article 1833 of the Code civil (French Civil Code). Like any future, such rewriting promises possible changes, which converge to an increased power of the judge The question for the future is: "who will decide the consistency of these interests and will make the balance?". At less, it might be a "coregulation³Berns, T., Docquir, P.-F., Frydman, B., Hennebel, L and Lewkowicz, G., Responsabilités des entreprises et corégulation, 2007." between State and companies. At the end, it might be a transformation of companies into new legislators through soft law. Fairy tale or nightmare ?