The French System
of
recruitment and training of Magistrat (Judicial Officers)

In France, the Magistrature includes professional judges and public prosecutors Parquet, although they are both Magistrats. In the French system, all professional Magistrats are recruited and trained according to the same rules. There are two means of recruitment and training for Magistrats in France :

I. Recruitment by competition for entry to l'Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature (E.N.M)

This recruitment is based on a concours (national examination) and there is a long training period in a special school.

Entry is by anonymous written test(s) and then oral test(s). It is by competition and not examination because the number of places is limited.

A candidate’s merit is assessed by a jury, presided over by a magistrat from the Cour de Cassation, including judicial and administrative officials and law professors. Until now, there have been in practice two types of competition :
- a student competition or premier concours, is open to candidates of less than 27 years of age who hold a diploma obtained after four years of higher study after the baccalauréat. It should be noted that it does not necessarily have to be a diploma in law.
- a civil servants competition or second concours, is open to candidates under 40 years of age who have worked for at least four years as civil servants in public administration; it should be noted that there is no need for any diploma for this competition.

The first competition offers the larger number of positions (about 80%) but both concours are of the same level and are based upon the same tests. They consist of tests on general knowledge and on public and private law.
The programm of legal tests is fairly important. Although the rules do not require candidates to hold diplomas in law, success in the competition requires legal knowledge at a very high level.
A few practical observations on the concours can be made as follows :
In the premier concours for a number of years the selection has become stricter[1]; Also in the premier concours one sees a rise in the number of women candidates : about 7 out of 10 candidates are women and one finds the same proportion among those who are successful in the concours. Since the beginning of the 1980s the majority of those admitted to the School have been women and today 45% of the Magistrature are women , who in a few years time will form the majority.
As far as the second concours is concerned, for the last few years there has been a relative decline in numbers because the number of candidates for the posts barely exceeds 3 per post. There is also a problem regarding level of ability, illustrated by the fact that in 1993 the jury did not want to fill all the 20 posts offered and that 7 of these post reverted back to the premier concours.
Lastly a loi organique[2] of February 1992 makes provision for a third type of competition open to people with 8 years of professional experience or who have held certain elected local offices or exercised the functions of a non-professional judge. The implementing decree, décret d'application, for this law has not yet been introduced. It can be noted that for this competition there is also no requirement for a diploma.

The successful candidates in one of the competitions become pupils of l'Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature. They are called auditeurs de justice. The number of pupils varies from year to year and according to the number of posts offered in the competition.

The training of the auditeurs de justice last for 31 months. It is split into two large parts : a 'generalist' phase and a 'specialist' one.

The generalist phase lasts for about 25 months. It includes, roughly, a period of study, principally at the school in Bordeaux and a period of practical training of more than a year at a court of first instance (tribunal de grande instance). The period of study in Bordeaux is devoted to lecture teaching and projects undertaken in small groups.

The teaching is not, in principle, of an academic or university nature, it is more on the practical side. The school has a permanent teaching staff of 17 maîtres de conférences, who are judicial officers posted for a number of years, but it is also necessary each year to call on more than 150 temporary teachers, who are specialists in a variety of disciplines : law, history, sociology, psychology, psychiatry, forensic medicine, accountancy....

Although focused on the practical, the training places importance on consideration and thought. Judicial practices are subjected to criticism.

During the training period in court, the auditeur de justice is introduced to the practice of the different judicial functions under the supervision and guidance of the Magistrats of the court. The pupils actually carry out the judicial functions of the bench and the Parquet, but they cannot sign any act on their own.

At the end of the generalist phase, a jury called jury de classement, produces a class list in order of merit of the pupils that it considers suitable for judicial functions. This list is based on the marks obtained by each pupil in the course of study in Bordeaux and in the training in court as well as some specific tests which take place before the jury itself.

Therefore, there is a check on ability ; an auditeur can be excluded or invited to repeat which gives the training at the School a probationary character.

After the order of merit, the auditeurs choose in the order of their placing the posts which they would like to take up from the list of vacant posts which has been prepared by the Minister of Justice. The posts offered include those of juge de grande instance, juge d'instruction, juge des enfants, juge d'application des peines, substitut du procureur de la République, juge ou substitut placé auprès d'un chef de Cour.

After that the spécialisation fonctionnelle begins in the area chosen by the pupil. This stage involves a month of study at the school and four months' placement in Court. At the end of this spécialisation fonctionnelle the pupil is admitted as a Magistrat in the allocated court. His nomination to his first post is by a decree of the Président de la République made after taking advice from the Conseil Supérieur de la Magistrature. One observation of a legal nature ought to be made : until now pupils of the School have always been nominated to a post which they have chosen but the recent constitutional reforms raised the question of whether this would always be the case. The constitutional reform of 1993 provided that the nomination of Magistrat to the bench, even the first nomination on leaving the School, should require the agreement of the Conseil Supérieur de la Magistrature. The Conseil Supérieur can disagree with the choice expressed by an auditeur de justice. This is why an loi organique passed in 1994 provides that the jury de classement will, for each pupil, issue a statement of ability with a recommendation for the first job which it considers the most suited to that pupil. It is thought observance by the pupil of the recommendations should, in practice, avoid any risk of subsequent disagreement with the Conseil.

I have mentioned the activity of the Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature without really saying what this school is and how it is organised.

L'Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature was created in 1959 by the loi organique on the Magistrat. It is an établissement public that is to say, it is a body with a certain autonomy from the Ministry of Justice. The important decisions concerning the running of the School and the programme of initial and continuing training are taken by the School's Board of Governors. This Board of Governors is presided over by the first president of the Cour de Cassation and includes the Procureur Général of the Cour de Cassation, two directors of the Ministry of Justice, Magistrats, university professors, certain qualified persons, a representative of the maitres de conference and two representatives of each promotion of pupils.

It is therefore this Board which runs the School and as such chooses the lecturers. The members of the School management who are given permanent responsibility are nominated by the Ministry of Justice, or on its proposal and the Director himself is nominated by a decree from the Conseil des Ministres.

The School is funded by a grant from the Ministry of Justice. It is the Board of Governors which decides how this is to be allocated. It should be mentioned that the budget of the School includes the salary paid to pupils during their training. From the legal point of view, the School is under the supervision of the Minister of Justice. It has the power whether or not to approve the main decisions of the Board of Governors. In practice, this power has fallen into disuse. The School's base is in Bordeaux, but there is an important annex in Paris in l'Ile de la Cité. The School employs about 100 civil servants to undertake its various services.

It is possible for candidates to enter directly into the Magistrature if they have a diploma requiring 4 years of higher study after the baccalauréat and have undertaken professional activity which qualifies them particularly for judicial functions. This professional activity must have lasted at least 7 years if one is to enter on the second grade and at least 17 years if one is to enter on the first grade. Direct nomination as a Magistrat can only be made with due agreement of a commission presided over by the First Président of the cour de Cassation and is made up of a majority of elected Magistrats. The Ministry of Justice submits files on the candidates to this commission, which before reaching its decision may put a candidate on probation for a maximum of six months. This allows an evaluation report to be made through the Ecole. At the end of this probation the candidate has a interview with the jury de classement of auditeurs de justice who express a view on his aptitude to exercise judicial functions. The commission then gives its view on the application. If the commission gives a favourable view it can decide that the candidate should undertake special training, which could last for up to six months, before taking up his duties.

In practice, direct recruitment is not the principal means of entry to the 'Magistrature' compared with entry by concours to the School. In some years this form of recruitment can represent 25-30% of the total appointments, particularly where there are many vacant posts. At present, recruitment in this form barely exceeds 10% . Such candidates are often avocats and civil servants and in the last few years, lawyers from the private sector.

The concours for entry into the Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature and direct recruitment are two very different means of entry into the corps judiciaire,, although each of them aims to emphasise objective criteria of selection based on aptitude and professional competence. However it must be emphasised that all Magistrats subsequently benefit from continuing education organised by the Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature. Each year more than half of the 6 000 Magistrats in practice follow at least one course of continuing education.

I would like to give some details on the subject of what this continuing training means, which under the Magistrats' rules is a right. Each year, on the proposal of the management of the School, the Board of Governors adopts a programme of continuing education for the following year. This programme is aimed at each Magistrat who is required to return a form to the School setting out the courses he is interested in. It consists of a programme based on themes whose subjects are very varied (environmental law, business law, criminal law for finance and economics, public speaking and communication, justice and emergency , means of modernisation, Islam and the modern Arab world...) in group or individual sessions in various institutes and enterprises in France and abroad (the National Assembly, the Stock Exchange, the ECJ orf the ECHL) and also some more advanced study sessions. Although the sessions last a week and involve 35-70 participants, the cycles run for 8 months, 2 days a week and allows advanced study in a practical way on a particular subject (community law, commercial law). They are aimed at about 15 participants.

These generally take place in Paris but some training days may be organised in the courts of appeal.
Continuing education at the same time can be a means of renewing and updating professional knowledge and a means of opening justice to the outside world.
As well as ensuring the maintenance and improvement of the professional knowledge of Magistrats, continuing education allows them to identify themselves as members of one body regardless of their means of entry.

[1] 8 candidates per post in 1991
     10                                          1992
     16                                       1993
     18                                       1994
In the 1960s and 1970s, there were 3 to 5 candidates per post.
[2] lois organiques are the means by which some of the detail of   constitutional law is enacted.