ABSTRACT
The French judicial system shares many features with those of Britain and the United States: the belief in procedural due process, the principle that no action is punishable except on the basis of law (nulla poena sine lege), the rejection of ex post facto law, the presumption of the innocence of the accused, and the independence of the judiciary. Some of these principles were articulated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789 and reaffirmed and extended by the preamble to the Constitution of 1946, and they have become part of republican constitutions; others have been embraced by political practice through legislation and judicial interpretation. The French system of legal norms is based on abstract principles (code law) as compared with the Anglo-American tradition of judicial precedents (common law, or case law). However, this distinction has in reality become somewhat obscured. Much common law in Anglo-American democracies has been superseded by statute law; conversely, French code law allows for rules of custom and precedent in cases where codes are insufficient as guides for judicial decisions.
