Forecasts are well underway as to the fate of the reform

Under the new section 61-1 of the Constitution, the prior question of constitutionality should see the day when will be adopted more quickly, necessary Act. A priori control powered by the deputies or senators, will be then added control a posteriori, open to any person, on any law, regardless of its date.

It will be well "issue", and not an exception, since the judge will be able to pass it but cannot y answer itself. It will be well "precedent", since it will be priority over the issue of "character" (compliance with supranational law), which can be also asked but will be considered in the normal course of the procedure. Finally, this preliminary question will be of "constitutionality", since it will tend to check that the Act is applied respects the rights and freedom guaranteed by the Constitution.

Individuals will thus have two ways to put the Act in question, instead of one so far. They will still be able to claim compliance with international commitments but will also, now, to place safe from the Constitution itself, which, strangely, they had been denied so far.

The procedure first gives the judge the power to exclude the issues already decided or no direct effect on the trial, or simply not serious. It also provides a filter exercised by the State Council and the Court of cassation, to avoid undue actions, and finally impose deadlines, to avoid delaying tactics. The old control of character in will therefore not delayed for a moment; This is the new constitutional review which will be accelerated, following a kind of fast track built for this purpose.

Of course, the reform has meaning only if the filter does not become a plug, and that the superior courts are actually to the Constitutional Council the issues that must be made. Even better, they will play this sound game displayed priority help them. The Parliament, Furthermore, would be well advised to be confined to the question whether new, without reference to a "serious problem". On the one hand, it would be offensive to assume that the superior courts can meet a too serious difficulty for them, on the other hand and most importantly, even if there is no difficulty as unconstitutional is obvious, it must still either the Constitutional Council that the sanctions.

Cleaning up

Will if the latter, at the end of a public and adversarial procedure, declares unconstitutional legislation, it be repealed for the future and for all, there where character control does that to reject it for the dispute in question. Thus will rise a real right of any person to obtain the repeal of unconstitutional text. At the same time, such repeal may sound immediately on other litigation in progress, hence the usefulness of a rapid response.

Forecasts are well underway as to the fate of the reform. Bet that, at least in the first time, the issues will be many, but that relatively few will cross the installed filters. A few years will probably suffice to household in ancient laws which are no longer the standards of today, perhaps, in particular, customs or fiscal areas. The reform will then be a cruising speed.

In the last thirty or twenty years, all practitioners to were familiar with international and Community law, and had quickly learned to handle character control. They will soon do the same with the prior issue of constitutionality. Always in France, the constitutional law had only a handful of practitioners in institutions. Tomorrow, it will spread everywhere, for individuals, associations, companies and their lawyers. It will become what he had intended to be since dawn, the Declaration of 1789, an instrument effective and timely protection of rights and freedoms than the Nation has chosen to include in its basic law. In France, the litigant joins then that of many Western European countries, in the protection of the rule of law now disposed of its last blind.