Working papers

►   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). .   

This working paper serves as a support for the article to be published in the book written in French, Ingall-Montagnier, Ph., Marin, J.-Cl., Roda, J.-Ch. (dir.), Compliance : l'entreprise,le régulateur et le juges, in the Serie Regulations, co-edited by Éditions Dalloz and the Journal of Regulation and Compliance (JoRC). This work uses by links the Compliance and Regulation Law bilingual Dictionnary. - Summary. We have to admit it. Because in front of so numerous and so disparate Compliance rules we pain so much to figure out, we are constraint to go in so changing directions, that we console ourselves with their weight, their cost and our misunderstanding by affirming that Compliance is "complex" and "transdisciplinary", as if complicated words could mask our disarray. But "Compliance" is not a cataclysm, a bomb sent by the Americans to annihilate Europe, the new form of a Cold War in legal dress, it is a way of seeing things that comes from afar, with its own coherence and which must first be understood. If one understands where this new corpus comes from, which now obliges companies to prove that they effectively take on the fulfillment of certain goals that go beyond them, notably the fight against money laundering, tax evasion, but also the fight against the sale of human beings or the struggle for the preservation of nature and Earth, then we can continue the story. Indeed, not all companies are targeted by such internalization of "monumental goals" within them." An ordinary firm is destined to develop itself in order to achieve a goal which is its own. The concern of these goals can only be for the "crucial firm. "If there is to be a change in the corporate project, then it can only depend on its" position "in a system, a financial, economic, social, global system, or because it has itself decided that it would be so. The company then bears the burden of proof that such a discourse of new responsibility corresponds to a behavior and an effective culture. The weight of the rules already exists today. And it is for the moment that now, in a negative and passive way, Compliance is perceived, by those who "undergo" it (companies), even by those who apply it (public authorities). The transformation towards a "culture of trust" is the issue between today and tomorrow, because tomorrow, it is a relationship of trust that could be built between these companies and the public authorities, because they would share information (systemic issue), because they would agree on the less technical monumental goals (protection of human beings issue). In this perspective, "Compliance" is above all a bet, that of the place of human beings in globalized markets.

This working paper serves as a support for an article published in French in the Recueil Dalloz. In Lisbon, in the Web Summit of November 2017, a machine covered with a skin-like material and a sound-producing device gave a speech in public at this conference on digital. For example, a French article tells the event by this title : Le premier robot citoyen donne sa propre conférence au web summit  (The first citizen robot gives his own conference to the web summit). Some time later, reports show the same robot walking and taking more than 60 facial expressions, the text laudatif that accompanies the images designating the automaton by the article: she.¹It is true that in 1966, the BBC already presented a sort of robot being the "ideal" servant and designating it by the article "she".. The machine, which falls legally within the category of "things", is thus presented as a person. Let's look elsewhere. Women, who are human beings, sign contracts by which they agree to give birth to children, with whom they claim they have no connection, that they are not mothers, that they will hand them over immediately at the exit of their belly to those who desired their coming, this desire for parenthood creating by hitself the true and only link between the child and his "parents of intent". The mother-carrier is often openly referred to as "oven". The woman, who falls legally within the category of the "person", is thus presented as a thing. The two sensational phenomena are of the same nature. They call two questions: 1.Why? The answer is: money. Because both are the result of the new construction of two fabulous markets by supply. 2.How? The answer is: by the destruction of the distinction between the person and things. The distinction between person and things is not natural, it is legal. It is the base of the western legal systems, their summa divisio. If this distinction disappears, and for money to flow, it must actually disappear, then the weak human being will become the thing of the strong one. Read below the developments.

This working document served as a basis for a lecture given in French at the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques  (French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences) on September 25, 2017, in the cycle of conferences conducted under the presidency of Michel Pébereau,  Quelles réformes ? (What reforms?) Consult the presentation (in French) of the conference cycle (2017). It served as the basis for the publication of an article published  in French in 2018 in the book directed by Michel Pébereau Réformes et transformations (Reforms and transformations).

This working paper is the support for the article to appear in the collective book  dedicated to our very dear friend and colleague Philippe Néau-Leduc. It uses the Bilingual Dictionary of the Regulatory and Compliance Law. Compliance Law has the same teleological functioning as the Economic Law to which it belongs, which consists in placing the normativity of rules, decisions and reasoning in the aims pursued. Once we know what the goals of compliance techniques are, then we know who should be responsible for them, who must be subject to them, who must activate the rules: compliance rules must be activated by those who are in the best position to achieve the outcome in order to achieve the goal sought by the authority which designed the compliance mechanism. The "circles" are thus plotted in a rational and pragmatic way. That, all of it ("useful effect"), but not beyond that. The notion of efficiency does not always imply balancing: on the contrary, it can involve drawing circles which designate those who are "placed" to carry the burden of the rules because they are capable of producing them the desired effects. Within these circles, the rules must apply without restriction and without compromise, but they must not apply beyond these circles. Drawing such circles requires defining the Law of Compliance itself, since on the one hand the choice of those who must implement the Compliance depends on the aims of the Compliance and on the other hand the definition of the Law of Compliance is itself teleological in nature. This is why, contrary to the assertion that the exercise of definition would be useless in these matters, which would be above all on a case-by-case basis, this effort to define and determine the purposes is, on the contrary, necessary in practice to show which enterprise must bear the obligations of compliance and which must not. But it is enough to have posed this to reveal the major difficulty of the Compliance, that explains resistances, and even gives the impression that one is confronted with an aporia. If, as a matter of principle, what is expected of the "users" of the Compliance mechanisms must be articulated to the aim that is affected by the authors of the compliance mechanisms to them, we must have a minimum correspondence between the aims of these authors (Legislators and Regulators) and the aims pursued by those who are responsible for implementing them: companies. However, this correspondence does not exist at first sight, because the compliance mechanisms are found to be uniquely based on "monumental goals" which the public authorities have a legitimate concern, whereas companies have for their own interest . The two circles do not match. The internationalization of concern for these aims in companies would therefore be only a mechanism of violence of which enterprises are the object, violence felt as such. (I). To resolve this violence, it is better to stop confusing the State and enterprises, whose goals are not the same, and draw the circle of subjects of law "eligible" for Compliance. It is highly legitimate to target certain entities, in particular this category of companies, which are the "crucial operators", in a binding way, as it is legitimate to govern companies that have expressed a desire to surpass their own interests. These circles of a different nature can overlap on a concrete operator: for example, if a bank – alway a crucial operator that is structural because it is systemic – is also international – a crucial operator because of its activity – decides to worry about others by commitments verified by the authorities to overcome their own interest (social responsibility), but these different circles are not confused. In any case, companies may belong to only one circle, or even belong to none. In the latter case, they must therefore remain beyond the reach of the pressure and cost of Compliance Law, in particular because they are not objectively required to realize the "monumental goals" aimed at effectiveness and do not want it: in a liberal system, it is for the public authorities to aim at the general interest, the ordinary people indirectly participating in it by paying the tax. (II). It is by making these "Compliance Circles" of eligible subjects of this specific Law to implement the heavy but justified and controlled burden of Compliance with regard to the monumental goals that this new system  aims, that then opens a royal way in order to find a uniqueness and to increase the "monumental function" of the Compliance Law by a relation of Trust towards the global general interest, rather than the mechanical application of rules whose meaning is not understood and whose perception is no longer perceived than violence.

This working paper is the basis for an article written in French to be published in the French publication RÉGULATION, SUPERVISION, COMPLIANCEE, to be published in the RÉGULATIONS series at Éditions Dalloz. This work uses the Compliance and Regulation Law bilingual Dictionnary. - This Working Paper aims to show the movement that starts from Regulation Law to Compliance Law, now in the process of being born. In order to explain this movement, in order to anticipate the near future, in what it should not be and in what it should be, it is necessary to reconstruct how the Compliance Law was born of the Regulation Law, which has thus found the sources of the Public Services Law of which it had at first cut the roots (I). Indeed Regulation Law has in a happy way renewed the Law but also narrowed its perspective. Today, the phenomenon of globalization and the need for public authority that States can not satisfy according to traditional legal methods implies the establishment of a sort of "global public service". This is done by the Law of Compliance which revolutionizes all legal systems, both Common Law and Civil Law (II). Indeed, Compliance Law internalizes in some companies, the "crucial operators", the duty to make effective the "monumental goals" that the regulatory authorities have formulated and of which these companies must render globally effective. In this respect, the Law of Compliance is the extension of the Law of Regulation, which makes a new scope and in its aims and in its space. It is the whole of Law that is transformed. The near future will tell if it is reflected in clashes, between companies and regulators, between Europe and the United States, or on the contrary by a pact of trust between the crucial operators and the Regulators. If this is achieved, the Law of Compliance, expressing the political dimension of the Law of Regulation, expressing the share of companies that ceases to be neutralized by the mechanics of the markets, will be an advancement of the Law. It is in this perspective that we must build the European Compliance Law.      

Compliance. Trust. Two words that come more and more often than before at our readers' eyes or listeners' ears. And yet they do not seem to match well. They even seem to repel each other. Indeed, Compliance is the way in which Public Authorities trust certain private operators, not in themselves, but with their structural capacities to mechanically capture the information that these authorities need (I). This presupposes a vision of the world in which Companies are powerful and powerful alone but are not virtuous, while Public Authorities, such as the Public Prosecutor's Office or Regulators, are weak but virtuous alone. Such a conception of Compliance transforms companies into automata. Such a vision of the world has no future: only human beings can be trusted, whose fallibility must be accepted, as Compliance is then the expression of a relationship built on trust that is to be seen between non-mechanical operators, namely public Institutions and private Operators, who can both have in common concern for an interest which goes beyond them and which was formerly called the general interest (II). From this reality, no new doubt for private companies, but which explains the strange intimacy between the violent Compliance Law and the new spontaneous order of Corporate Social Responsibility, it is up to them to demonstrate this concern Cf others that it shares with the Public Authorities, except to fall in Compliance reduced to costly procedures, empty endless staked out of sanctions without control. It is thus for Companies to make this branch of Compliance Law emerging become what can be the best, when it is possible that it becomes what would be the worst.

This article provides a basis for an article published  in the Recueil Dalloz  in French : "Le droit de la compliance". ‘Compliance’ issues have been increasingly discussed in recent years. Articles, handbooks, soft law, decisions or definition have been written. But nothing really converges. The term ‘conformity’ [conformité in French] is used in parallel, or even instead of the usual concept of compliance. There are as many definitions of what compliance is as there are authors writing on the matter. And yet it is used in manifold ways, from Competition law to International Finance law, from the hardest law (enforced with the help of the most stringent sanctions) to business ethics, according to which behaving should be enough to be compliant. At a time when compliance invades law, it should be first noted that we are too shortsighted to grasp the mechanism (I), whereas it is necessary to build a comprehensive Compliance law (II). Read developments below.

► Full Reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., Globalization from the point of view of Law, working paper, May 2017. - 🎤 This working paper initially served as a basis for a synthesis report made in French in the colloquium organized by the Association Henri Capitant in the International German Days on the subject of "Le Droit et la Mondialisation" (Law and Globalization). 📝 Il sert dans un second temps de base à l'article paru dans l'ouvrage La Mondialisation. 📝 it serves as a second basis for the article (written in English, with a Spanish Summary) to be published in the Brezilian journal Rarb – Revista de Arbitragem e Mediação  (Revue d`Arbitrage et Médiation). It uses the Bilingual Dictionary of the Law of Regulation and Compliance. - ► Summary of the Working: Globalization is a confusing phenomenon for the jurist. The first thing to do is to take its measure. Once it has been taken, it is essential that we allow ourselves to think of something about it, even if we have to think about it. For example, on whether the phenomenon is new or not, which allows a second assessment of what is taking place. If, in so far as the law can and must "pretend" to defend every being, a universal claim destined to face the global field of forces, the following question – but secondary – is formulated: quid facere? Nothing ? Next to nothing ? Or regulate? Or can we still claim that the Law fulfills its primary duty, which is to protect the weak, including the forces of globalization? - read the Working Paper below⤵️