L’Accès aux cours suprêmes – rapport français

The text presents the issue of access to the Cassation Court in France. The author argues that the functions of the Cassation Court are strictly interconnected with the rules determining the access to it. According to the author, the French model can be described as democratic, as opposed to aristocratic, because it depends on purely legal criteria. The author divided restrictions in the access to the Cassation Court into direct ones and indirect ones. The former are specifically aimed at controlling the flow of cases. Being purely technical in nature, they determine the admissibility of cassation. On the other hand, they also include restrictions which enable the court to examine the substance of the case and evaluate it in a discretionary way. The author suggested that the court’s obligation to provide grounds of refusal to examine cassation weakens the ability of this filter toimprove theefficiency of the Cassation Court. Issuing such decisions takes the same amount of time as examining the substance of the case. Moreover, merely 30% of cassation complaints are not accepted for further examination. Therefore, the author underlined the importance of indirect restrictions in the access to the Cassation Court. As far as indirect filters are concerned, she stressed the positive role of cassation lawyers who specialize in filing cassations. She also pointed out at an interesting legal solution enabling the opposite party to ask the court to suspend the cassation proceedings if the party who filed the cassation did not comply with an enforceable judgment of a lower instance court. In practice it often happens that a cassation is withdrawn as a consequence of this motion.