ABSTRACT
When one turns to the French law reports one finds, not surprisingly, a range of factual situations very similar to those to be found in the UK cases. However, in form, the French decisions are of quite a different nature. Judgments still reflect the mos geometricus idea that a code is an axiomatic set of propositions that can be applied syllogistically to any factual situation and thus such judgments are stylistically arranged as a series of premises seemingly leading to an inexorable conclusion (cf Chapter 14). In substance, and usually behind the face of the actual law report, it is a quite different matter.137 Nevertheless, even accepting the roles played by precedent, policy and interpretative discretion in French legal reasoning, there remains a very different mentality with respect to the representation of legal knowledge. French lawyers do not see legal propositions as trapped within factual situations nor do they adhere to the English view that the role of a supreme court is simply to decide particular cases between particular litigants (cf Chapter 2 § 3). As Professor Legrand has said, who in France remembers much detail about the facts even of the great cases?138 French lawyers talk, instead, of the ‘règle qui se dégage des arrêts de justice’ which is ‘aussi obligatoire que celle résultant de la loi’ (rules detaching themselves from cases and having the same obligatory force as statute).139 This ‘detached’ view of law – that is to say a view of legal knowledge detached from factual situations – has encouraged a much more ‘geometric’ vision of the institutional relationships between people and people and people and things (cf Chapters 3, 14). The result is that French jurists, including the judiciary, place emphasis on symmetry.
