ABSTRACT
Within the French legal system the words ‘le magistrat, le juge and le conseiller’ are all used to express the English concept of a judge. The term le magistrat is, by and large, confined to the ‘ordinary’ legal system – les tribunaux de l’ordre judiciaire – where there are two distinct types of magistrat. A distinction is drawn between, on the one hand, the magistrature assise (also known as the magistrature du siège) who are responsible for the actual hearing of the case and who correspond most closely to the English notion of a judge and, on the other hand, the magistrature debout who intervene on behalf of the Ministère Public (the Parquet – infra, p 47).
