Droit et Cultures (Dec 2005)

Preuve judiciaire et culture française

  • Emmanuel Jeuland

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 50
pp. 149 – 170

Abstract

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Attempts to unify procedure are presently made either at the regional (particularly European) level or at the world level (especially the Unidroit Principles and rules of the transnational civil procedure). However the main obstacle to these connections seems to be at the cultural level while specific difficulties concern the law of evidence (the discovery or cross-examination mechanisms being partly unknown in France). Therefore we can say after Pascal that access to judiciary truth strongly varies from one country to another. More precisely, the author wants here to determine the relationship between the law of evidence and French culture. After an attempt to determine the main features of French culture (tradition, equality, etc.), the author confronts them with the main rules of the law of evidence would it be at the criminal or civil level. It also appears that culture is made of a certain way of « weaving » legal relationships (filiation, marriage, contracts, nationality...) and that the rules of evidence allow to repair these ties or to create restoring law connections so that we eventually come to understand why a worldwide unification is especially difficult or even impossible without damaging part of the culture.

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