As every year for three years, Eric Dupond-Moretti was responsible for closing this Friday, February 17, the swearing-in ceremony for the new promotion of the National School of the Judiciary (ENM). In front of 380 “listeners” – the largest promotion of student magistrates ever since the creation of the establishment -, the Minister of Justice insisted on recalling his desire to “open up” the institution, “school of the Republic who “must look like him”. After having welcomed an “increased” outward development in recent years, he insisted on justifying his draft decree, currently being examined by the Council of State, which provides for the recruitment of permanent trainers not – magistrates within the school. “Managers, mediators or economists will thus be able to usefully complete your training course”, he defended.
If the proposal worries the unions, who see it as a threat to the independence of the institution, it is probably because it is part of a more than tumultuous relationship between Eric Dupond-Moretti and the school based in Bordeaux. Even before becoming Minister of Justice, the media lawyer pleaded in his book The dictionary of my life (Kero, 2018) for a suppression of the ENM, which would “embed” according to him “the young people in a mold from which they will never leave”. He compared the future magistrates to “pimply teenagers with reductive ideologies and formatted reasoning”. Atmosphere. Once appointed to the Chancellery, the Minister of Justice did not really relent. In September 2021, when the appointment of lawyer Nathalie Roret as director of the school was announced, the minister recalled that he was still in favor of the abolition of the institution, which according to him would promote ” self-segregation” and a certain “corporatism which distances justice from citizens”.
A criticism often formulated by different political figures. In 2007, the President of the Republic in office, Nicolas Sarkozy, regretted the supposed lack of diversity of the magistrates, by evoking professionals “who all look alike, same origins, same training, same mold”, even going so far as to compare them to “peas” of “the same color, the same size and the same lack of flavor”. In 2015, his former Prime Minister François Fillon in turn proposed to abolish the ENM, arguing in the program Info Questions on LCP “that all schools which are closed on themselves develop after a certain time a kind of esprit de corps which is not necessarily desirable”.
A desire for openness
The accusation tenses the management of the ENM. She frequently recalls that in addition to the 32 permanent trainers who currently make up the teaching staff (almost all magistrates, with the exception of a director of the judicial registry), nearly 700 contributors with different profiles (lawyers, psychologists, sociologists, journalists, doctors) come each year to bring their point of view and their experience on different themes.
An “opening” which is also observed in recruiting auditors : for the year 2023, no less than 39% of the candidates admitted are people in a situation of professional retraining. On the benches of the ENM will rub shoulders with law graduates, but also former clerks, lecturers, professors and teachers, executives in the bank and even a former employee of the SNCF. “For several years, the profiles have been widely diversified within the school, even if the social origin of the magistrates remains clearly attached to the higher categories”, summarizes Lucile Belda, doctoral student in sociology and author of a thesis in progress on the establishment. “That’s how we can perhaps talk about ourselves,” she explains, having counted in the 2019 promotion 35% of children of executives, 11% of children of teachers and 9% children of liberal professions.
“We are taught to put aside our emotions”
Behind these accusations “between oneself” sometimes slips another criticism: that of a body with conformist ideas, even “ideologized”. “Everyone knows that there is still a political orientation”, estimated François Fillon in 2015 about the ENM, while the Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira had appointed, a few months earlier, the ex-president of the Judiciary Syndicate, marked on the left, to the position of deputy director of the school. An announcement strongly criticized by the right, while the union had been pinned two years earlier for having set up in its premises “a wall of idiots”, on which were displayed various portraits of political figures.
Among the magistrates, the accusation makes people jump. “We are taught to be aware of possible biases, to put aside our emotions, to have a technician’s gaze. I am not saying that we are machines without emotions, but we are clearly taught the necessary distance”, opposes Stéphanie Caprin (class of 2009), examining magistrate in Pontoise and national secretary of the Union of magistrates (USM). “The school works without giving us a modus operandi: there are quite varied interpretations and analyzes on all subjects, from taking into account the victim’s words to the question of the meaning of the sentence, including the problem of prison overcrowding”, adds a listener from the class of 2022, currently at the end of training.
The SNM-FO Magistrates Unit organization is the only one to take a more nuanced position. “We are critical of the excessive place given to the teaching of ethics at the ENM, under cover of which we sometimes perceive a spirit of conformity and formatting, which would take precedence over training”, deplores Michel Dutrus, general delegate of the union. “We are not in three-penny propaganda, but I feel, for example, an orientation towards an anti-prison spirit transmitted in certain teachings”, he believes. A reproach swept away by the direction of the ENM, which recalls “that the principle of contradiction is part of the DNA of the school and the fundamental values of the judicial institution”.
“We scrupulously take care to ensure that different approaches can be expressed and presented to our students, without us advocating the preference of one over the other,” he added. A position confirmed by Lucile Belda, who indicates that while certain works presented at the ENM “shade the idea of prison a little, through sociological studies that show the reality of the prison world on reintegration or recidivism”, they are “always accompanied by other points of view, with a large place dedicated to the debate”.
“Reflection Tools”
Aurélien Martini, Deputy Secretary General of the USM, recalls for his part that the ENM is a school of application, within which it is necessary to distinguish two types of teaching: pure technicality (how to settle a dispute in civil law , drafting an indictment, managing the prosecutor’s telephone hotline, etc.) taught only by trainer magistrates, and related subjects (judicial humanity, judicial environment, etc.), where different speakers follow one another. “If there were to be ideology, it would rather be in these subjects… But these are precisely those where the school brings in specialists from outside, with very different approaches.” On the great debates of society, such as the question of criminal responsibility, the alteration of discernment or even the meaning of the sentence, he evokes “tools of reflection” entrusted to the auditors, “who then do with them what they want it”.
“There is no political identity among magistrates, any more than among auditors: on the contrary, you have a great diversity in the way of exercising and understanding the profession”, analyzes for his part Laurent Willemez , sociologist and co-author of Sociology of the judiciary (Armand Collin, 2023), to be published on March 8. “Some magistrates will thus start from the principle that it is necessary to punish to defend public order, while others see it rather as the possibility of repairing society, with a more social fiber.”
Lucile Belda remembers that, during the confinements, a debate had agitated several students: should citizens who defied the strict rules of confinement be punished? And did the listeners themselves have to risk going out illegally? “There are those who defended their freedom, and those who were very respectful of the law”, recalls the sociologist, who believes that as such, a “real magistrate identity” is created during the years of study at the ‘ENM. “Some are very strict about their vision of the law, and for example cut ties with their friends who had illegal practices, such as drug use. There is a gap between their life before and the future personality status public that they build for themselves.”
“Magistrate Identity”
Within the Bordeaux school, it is precisely the meaning of this professional identity in the current context that would fuel the debate. “We observe a management of justice, where quantity counts more than quality. The anxiety of many listeners is to learn at school a level of requirement that they will never be able to apply in their daily lives “, explains Denis Salas, teaching magistrate associated with the ENM, director of the review The Notebooks of Justice and author of an essay against “penal populism”, in 2012. In summary, future magistrates fear that the quantitative pressure, in particular denounced by 3000 of their elders in a column published in The world last November, end up distorting the act of judging. “If there is indeed an ethical and terrible question that torments magistrates, it is this: is it better to abandon this culture of “doing well”, to treat a larger stock of files less well? , reports Aurélien Martini.
Last year, the class of 2022 decided to abandon the practice of choosing a great figure in law or the judiciary to qualify it, in order to give itself the name of the “Tribune of 3000”. Long debated, this proposal was voted by 60% of future magistrates. “We are well aware of the working conditions of our future colleagues, we perceive the dysfunctions”, confides to L’Express a listener from the class of 2022, already aware of the challenges that await her at the exit of the “cocoon” of the ‘ENM.
The Minister of Justice tried to ease tensions this Friday, arguing in his speech that “the function of judging should no longer be a solitary act”. “The more this school opens outwards, the more it is likely to enrich you humanly,” he insisted, while his action plan for justice, unveiled last January, provides in particular for the recruitment 1,500 additional magistrates by 2027.