Since 2017, a review mounted with the Syndicat de la Magistracy and in partnership with La Découverte Éditions has been offering a new look at justice, exploring each issue an exciting theme.
Its bright pink color might suggest that the theme would be light and joyful, but it is not. In issue 24 of the review Deliberatereleased in March 2025, it is the theme of nationality that is explored through several articles: “nationality and its judges” (by Jules Lepoutre, professor of public law), “distort under Vichy” (by Claire Zalc, director of research at the EHESS), “From proof to suspicion” of researcher Émilien Fargues, of the sociologist Myriam Hachimi-Alai and (judge on availability, member of the Magistrates’ Syndicate), “In Mayotte, La Fabrique des foreigners” by Rémi Carayol, independent journalist, “gender and nationality”, of historian Linda Guerry and “a good conscience at low cost, the principle of gender equality” of Lisa Carayon, professor of law at Sorbonne Paris Nord. As the writing explains in its editorial and contrary to what one can imagine, this subject deserves all the more to be explored, that it has not always existed: “Nationality, in the modern sense of a tool allowing to designate those who have the right to be on the territory and to vote in the national elections, is a recent legal construction, dating from the end of the XIXe century “. Multiple angles which also show that we can go deeply by crossing the eyes of legal and judicial subjects (practitioners, scholars, users, observers). By working cold – far from the torments of the news -, the review proposes to embrace the theory, institutions, speeches and practices, to consider them as social issues in its own right. At the editorial staff of the journal, two members of the magistracy union, Juliette Renault, magistrate who worked as a children’s judge at the Nantes court and substitute for the prosecutor at the “minor-family” pole of the Nanterre prosecutor’s office and Lara Danguy des Deserts, also magistrate, passed by the Cabinet of Christiane Taubira when she was Seals, then investigating judge in Nantes. The latter agreed to answer news questions about the development of this review, its objectives and its ambitions. Encounter.
Actu-legal: How did you join the journal team and for what purpose?
Lara Danguy de Deserts : Since 2004, I have been a magistrate and penalty. I practiced in the prosecution, in the application of sentences, to the investigation and in central administration within the prison administration (penalty of sentence) and I was councilor of Christiane Taubira on penitentiary issues. I then obtained a detachment to integrate the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development as a project manager “International Criminal Justice” until 2018. Then I became vice-president responsible for instruction at the TGI of Nantes (Loire-Atlantique). I read of course the review from its first issues, and when I saw, in 2022, that they were looking for someone to resume the coordination of the review, it corresponded to a time when I wanted to take a step back on the functioning of justice, with all the difficulties that can be encountered in a court today. I was in full reflection on the profession of magistrate and I was thinking of setting foot in the edition, which has always attracted me, it was a quest for meaning and a desire to participate in a collective reflection.
-AJ: How was the review created and what is its link with the magistracy union?
Lara Danguy de Deserts : This is not the first time that the magistrates’ union had created a media. There had been JusticeCreated in 1969 and which stopped in 2007, but it was more a union journal – Auto produced – and piloted by the organs of the union with a journalist, editor -in -chief. There were six numbers per year and the newspaper subscription was included with the union membership. But social networks have simplified communication with union members. It was quickly a question of nourishing reflection more than informing, getting your nose out of the handlebars and reflecting on the challenges of society where justice is written. The goal was to get out of the organs of the union, to work independently, with an independent editorial committee bringing together magistrates and external personalities. Creating an open review on the company is reflected both in its internal functioning and in its target, which explains why we have associated with a publishing house with a storefront. There is more air and we are forced to question ourselves because around the table there are academics, lawyers, sociologists, law historians, the employee of a popular education association, a lawyer, a psychiatrist. This allows the problems to be tensioned, to approach things in a way that we did not think. Once a month, we meet and decide the themes, angles, lists of articles, then we have to put everything to music.
AJ: How is this critical space for reflection on questions as varied as the struggle, the status of prosecutors, the evolution of probationary regimes, etc., is organized?
Lara Danguy de Deserts : We alternate between judicial subjects and broader subjects, for example something very technical on the functioning of the parquet and, in view, an analysis on the criminalization of poverty. The choice of the theme of the central file is made by discussing in the editorial committee. A theme can come out and win the conviction and then we will refine it by making working groups to define the angle. In the last numbers, we had “continued the struggle”, “the fault of the poor”, “parquet: scratching the varnish” or “international crimes: locked justice”. In each file there is one or two articles of historical or notional framing, then we decline by concrete articles on the subject. In the game Variationswe can find articles unrelated between them but all dealing with justice, law, freedom. Then in the last part, we give way to a guest to whom we offer an interview where he or she can bring his singular look. Then we have a part of compared law, Justice everywherewhich is exciting: in this issue we deal for example from the judicialization of social issues in Japan. Finally, in the section Justice for allwe give the floor to litigants. The idea is to have access to a courts, to know the point of view on the other side of the bar. In this issue we show how complicated access to legal aid can be. In the previous one, we deal the trial Orange And the suicides that affected certain employees.
AJ: never news?
Lara Danguy de Deserts : Sometimes we are tempted by news subjects, but we rather try to find a subject that is not treated. We prefer to remain offset, also distant from the news of the union! It often happens a year between the choice of subjects and the release. For example, on this thematic file on nationality, we do not have doubled that it would be a subject of a burning topicality with the policy led by our government or what is happening on the other side of the Atlantic. The number that will follow, for example, concerns disability and asks a question: “How can justice devalue?” »»
