Regularly, when a court decision displeases in a media case, judges are accused of being “out of touch”, “far from reality”, “locked in their ivory tower”. In reality, they are confronted daily with reality in its harshest, most painful, most serious aspects, reminds us Ludovic Friat, president of the Union of Magistrates (USM).
I observe more and more often, during discussions about my profession as a judicial magistrate, the one I chose 34 years ago, being invariably questioned either on the “ government of judges “, or on the blindness of the magistrates, necessarily steeped in ” of oneself » and locked in their “ Ivory tower “.
Even on spaces and social networks that give pride of place to the professional experience and expertise of the speakers, some criticize me, more or less insidiously, for being in my ” Ivory tower “.
Like most of my colleagues, I feel this criticism as an injustice because it is so far removed from our professional reality.
It is a commonplace to be absolutely deconstructed because it is sometimes based on ignorance, sometimes on an ideological, philosophical or political bias, and sometimes simply the expression of a sort of psittacism of thought, well in zeitgeist giving pride of place to common sense “.
This ” common sense “, from the ” old times » or a “ Golden age » indeterminate, which must necessarily be opposed to “ elites », real or supposed, cut off from the Nation and the people.
However, repeating things does not make them a sociological or judicial reality.
Daily misery
Because finally in our society judicial personnel, including judges and prosecutors but also clerks, are on a daily basis directly immersed in the harshest, most violent, most sordid, most gloomy reality of our society.
We are faced with it just like the police, educators, integration and probation counselors but also teachers and caregivers.
The misery that the magistrate and his team encounter on a daily basis can be social, physical, psychological, economic, intellectual… It is the backdrop to many of our cases, both civil and criminal.
Some examples from my professional career, in which most of us will recognize ourselves:
➡️ I have, in my life as an investigating judge, participated in dozens of autopsies of men and women, children and infants, who died in every way imaginable. Although it is not a legal obligation, I was present both out of respect for the deceased, out of solidarity with my investigators, but also because it was “ my place » of the person responsible for the investigation in search of the truth. I think about it sometimes…the sights, the smells, the forensic discussions, the sound of the jigsaw.
I also organized and directed, as a “ director », number of criminal reconstructions, sometimes in tense contexts, of quasi-civil war, in bulletproof vest with the detonations of “ 243 ” and of ” 270 » nearby and the use of a VBRG (armored wheeled vehicle of the gendarmerie) to explore the crime scene.
I have maintained real professional friendships with a number of police officers, gendarmes, experts and lawyers.
➡️ I have, in my life as president of a correctional hearing, sentenced thousands of our fellow citizens to sentences that the court considered appropriate to the seriousness of the facts, but also to the personality of the author, at the end of a contradictory debate with the prosecution and the lawyers then in collegiality, in the secrecy of the deliberations, with my assessors.
I am quite incapable of counting it in terms of tens or even hundreds or thousands of years in prison, with probationary suspension or simple suspension… acquittals as well.
But always maintaining a “ essential cape » in the holding of the criminal hearing: that everyone has been given the opportunity to express themselves, to put forward their truth and their arguments, before the judge decides on guilt and then on the sentence. There’s nothing worse than the feeling of not being heard or disrespected.
Decompensating psychotics, abandoned elderly people…
➡️ I have, in my life as a district judge, managed decompensating psychotics who came to find me at my office – generally located away from the main building when it comes to a public sometimes “ unpresentable »-.
I have also accompanied elderly people abandoned by their children who were busy tearing each other apart. I will always remember this sentence, too often heard as a judge of guardianships from the children of the protégé contesting an expense; “I am his heir!” “. And I replied: “No. You are his child “.
I also remember this protected adult, who came to the hearing drunk, knocked over my desk and tried to hit me and then bite my clerk before I pushed him out in the absence of security personnel.
I have also, always as a district judge, sometimes found solutions for our fellow citizens who are over-indebted, bruised by life’s accidents, and assailed by credit companies.
➡️ I have, in my life as a judge practicing overseas, applied Kanak custom rather than positive law, assisted by assessors from the customary areas concerned. Rich moments of questioning my necessarily ethnocentric way of legally considering human and social relationships.
➡️ I have, in my life as an electoral dispute judge, scoured town halls, remote polling stations, nocturnal electoral commissions often without any other remuneration than the satisfaction of the duty to serve.
➡️ I have, in my life as a children’s judge (substitute), noticed that my educational assistance orders were not implemented or too late (one year later), due to a lack of adapted structures intended to provide young people with the primary need: emotional and educational security.
I issued prescriptions like a doctor but referred families to a service incapable of issuing my prescription, as if the pharmacist were telling them “ Well, sorry! come back next year, eh, I have more medicine! “.
➡️ I have, in my life as a sentence enforcement judge (substitute), noted the prison misery, but the next day, in correctional, pronounced firm sentences in view of the seriousness of the facts and the antisocial personality of the accused: judicial schizophrenia?
The judge being by nature, depending on each person’s point of view, is either too lax or too repressive….
Judicial misery twin sister of psychiatric misery
➡️ I have, in my life as a magistrate in central administration, faithfully applied government policy directives even when I did not fully adhere to them.
➡️ I have, in my life as president of immediate appearance (CI), held night hearings more often than in my turn to block the flow of removals. My famous “ Paris-Tokyo hearings » from Bobigny as I called them.
➡️ I have, in my life as a judge of freedoms and detention, frequented psychiatric hospitals and noticed that judicial misery was the twin sister of hospital misery.
➡️ I forgot, in my life as a student lawyer at the CRFPA in Aix-en-Provence, I ran to the registries and services of the courts in the area to look for the procedures of my internship supervisor’s clients, feverishly taking notes and try to find useful pleading elements there.
I waited for hours and experienced the anxiety of doing something wrong.
Anxiety that I found in my life as a union defender of colleagues referred for disciplinary purposes to the Superior Council of the Judiciary.
You liked it ? Are you still asking for more? … there is no shortage of anecdotes. They are the backbone of “ my ivory tower “. A tower rich and miserable at the same time of which I am humbly proud.
Apart from the fact that, like most of my colleagues, I do not come from a line of gents or great jurists. My grandparents and parents were waiters, janitors and teachers. Far, very far, from the image of social reproduction.
Nearly one in two magistrates, even among the “ first competitions » from the faculties of law or Science Po have, before passing this difficult republican competition, had a first professional life.
Doing a lot with too little
“ My ivory tower “, it also means preserving my humanity at all times, avoiding professional habits and protecting myself from biases in thinking.
“ My Ivory tower ”, it’s doing a lot with too little. If you only knew the miles of photocopies that I have been able to make, in 34 years of judiciary, to relieve my registry.
“ My Ivory tower “, is working on humans, with humans, for humans… with rituals and judicial and procedural rules which are our compass. It also means applying the law, sometimes very obscure, in conscience. Sometimes in solitude, often with the fear of making mistakes.
“ My ivory tower “, it is a technical and demanding profession, far from the Epinal image of the good King Solomon, which would only require a little ” common sense “.
“ My ivory tower » it’s my turn to see, deep in my eyes, the society that is ours.
