French judiciary

In France, judges are considered civil servants exercising one of the sovereign powers of the state, and, accordingly, only French citizens are eligible for judgeship. France's independent judiciary enjoys special statutory protection from the executive branch. Procedures for the appointment, promotion, and removal of judges vary depending on whether it is for the judicial, administrative, or audit court stream. Judicial appointments must be approved by a special panel, the High Council of the Judiciary, made up of other judges from the receiving court. Once appointed, judges serve for life and cannot be removed without specific disciplinary proceedings conducted before the Council with due process.

The Ministry of Justice handles the administration of courts and the judiciary, including paying salaries or constructing new courthouses. The Ministry also funds and administers the prison system. Lastly, it receives and processes applications for presidential pardons and proposes legislation dealing with matters of civil or criminal justice. The Minister of Justice is also the head of public prosecution, though this is controversial since it is seen to represent a conflict of interest in cases such as political corruption against politicians.

At the basic level, the courts can be seen as organized into:

The structure of the French judiciary is divided into three tiers:

There are exceptions to this scheme, as noted below.

Note: There exist significant problems with applying non-French terminology and concepts related to law and justice to the French justice system. For this reason, we shall define some of the words used in the rest of the article.

While in Germanic Europe the supreme courts can and do tend to write more verbose opinions supported by legal reasoning, the typical Francophone court of cassation decision is short, concise and devoid of explanation or justification. There is no stare decisis, or principle of precedent, binding lower courts to respect superior courts' rulings (case law) on questions of law; but a line of similar case decisions, while not precedent per se, forms the jurisprudence constante.

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