[13879] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: French law online, the Bib. Cujas
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Wed Apr 18 20:03:06 2001
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 01:44:39 -0700
From: Jack Kessler <kessler@WELL.COM>
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FYI France: French law online, the Bibliothe`que Cujas
To U.S. and most Anglo - American lawyers, one of the world's
great "mysteries wrapped in an enigma" is French law --
They have no "jury system", after all... also no "judicial
review", and all too little "precedent", and they have those
"crimes of passion"... and "inquisitorial" instead of proper
"adversarial" justice... and those strange "juges d'instruction",
who upset everybody all the time and are not even, really,
"judges"... and they think Victor Hugo still holds copyright on
_Notre Dame de Paris_ ... _and_ instead of august and forbidding
"caselaw" the French have that even more august and forbidding
"Code Napole'on"... and now, adding insult and obfuscation to
injury, an enormous and arcane body of "European" law is being
cobbled onto the already - confusing "French"...
And to French lawyers, many of whom understand US and Anglo -
American law very well, not being online in France has been a
frustration. In the US and Britain and elsewhere in the "Anglo -
American" legal realm, the legal community has been in the
forefront of online information -- dragged there, somewhat, by
several enterprising commercial "case reporting" efforts,
although also and in many cases, leading the charge toward public
access to legal information. France, on the other hand -- the
French generally, and their lawyers, and particularly their very
careful and conservative general legal community -- has been
"getting online" more slowly...
Now comes a change, however. The formidable Bibliothe`que Cujas
-- principal law library of the University of Paris --
"sciences juridiques, e'conomiques et politiques. La
bibliothe`que est de'positaire des publications de l'ONU,
Centre de documentation europe'enne (CDE), et Centre
d'acquisition et de diffusion de l'information
scientifique et technique (CADIST) pour les sciences
juridiques"
-- now is online at,
http://cujas.univ-paris1.fr
and the offering in "French law" which it now makes to the global
legal community is considerable:
* "Page d'accueil" -- currently including, very usefully, up - to
- date information about library usage, and about work being done
in the salle des pe'riodiques, and contact information for
associated libraries, and a link to the giant ABES "Catalogue
collectif en ligne des bibliothe`ques universitaires"
* "Informations" -- "horaires", consultation policies, etc.
* "Inscriptions"
(Nothing is more confusing for a foreign researcher than
"accueil" in France. The French are tremendously proud of the
"personal" aspect of the welcome which they accord foreign
visitors: instead of the formalistic and automated and "cold"
reception which so often greets the French themselves, when they
travel to "efficient" places like the US, at home the French try
their best to provide -- sometimes at the expense of a long wait,
but always eventually -- a real, live, person, who will endeavor
to divine a researcher's needs, and attempt at least to arrange
personal and warm and useful and continuing human contact with
real live people in the researcher's field in France.
But the French always underestimate the foreigner's terror at
having to do all of this in French. It is a hard language to
master, for any "Anglo - Saxon", or for a Japanese, or for some
poor Latin American researcher trying to slide by in Spanish --
made harder by current official language policy which stiffens
the whole attempt at "personal" communication somewhat.
So for this "accueil" purpose the Internet, and a good online
library "page d'accueil" can help enormously: foreigners read
French far better than they speak it, always, so the "page
d'accueil" at least can fore - arm them with the always -
necessary knowledge of opening hours, and inscription procedures,
and telephone and photocopying availability and policies, and
"schedules of repairs in the salle des pe'riodiques", so that
when the researcher finally arrives on - site the librarian can
focus not on such details but on the actual research subject.)
* "Catalogue" -- Les re'fe'rences des ouvrages, the`ses
e'trange`res et me'moires entre's a` la bibliothe`que depuis
1952, les the`ses franc,aises depuis 1987... Les titres de
pe'riodiques...
Good, clean, very useful records, i.e.:
Auteur David, Rene'
Titre Droit civil compare'
Sous-titre Les Grands syte`mes de droit contemporains.
Droit des pays latins [suite]
Lieu de publication Paris
Editeur Cours de droit
Date de publication 1949
Nombre de pages 448 p
Cote
1er Magasin 45.859-784
1er Magasin 45.859-743
Re'serve 45.859-784A
* "Guides Cujas" -- Pathfinders! -- in html, Word, pdf ! --
** "Les sources juridiques e'lectroniques -- Pre'sente'es
sous forme de tableaux par sources du droit (le'gislation,
doctrine, jurisprudence) pour le droit franc,ais et europe'en"
** "Le'gislation et travaux parlementaires depuis 1789 --
Ce guide se pre'sente sous forme de tableaux chronologiques par
pe'riodes le'gislatives avec la mention des cotes de la
bibliothe`ques"
** "Guide des sources juridiques : le'gislation,
jurisprudence, doctrine -- Ce guide de'crit la structure des
grands recueils de sources juridiques en droit franc,ais en
mentionnant les cotes et localisation des collections a` la
Bibliothe`que Cujas"
* "Cerdoc" -- a documentation center for French law --
CENTRE DE RECHERCHES DOCUMENTAIRES
Le CERDOC facilite l'acce`s a` l'information juridique et
e'conomique posse'de'e par la Bibliothe`que Cujas :
-- en interrogeant les banques de donne'es
franc,aises et e'trange`res (JURIFRANCE,
LAMYLINE, DIALOG, etc.).
-- en consultant INTERNET.
-- en offrant a` la consultation des ce'de'roms
juridiques, e'conomiques, politiques et de presse
(90 titres franc,ais et e'trangers) dont la liste
est _en ligne_.
(That last is a link to their full CDROM titles list, in:
droit franc,ais
droit communautaire / droit europe'en
droit international et par pays
sciences politiques
e'conomie, gestion et finances
ge'ne'ralite's et presse
-- a list perhaps usefully scanned by anyone / any law
shop interested in any of the above subjects.)
And, finally, and the most generally - useful resource by far
offered on this Bib. Cujas site, I myself think:
* "Ressources Internet"
** "Guide" -- interesting explanation of selection and
classification rationale in a digital age -- it seems
increasingly unlikely that any resource lacking a Website, to
which one can "link", will show up at all in research in the
future
** "Ge'ne'ralite's" -- "Internet, mode d'emploi",
"Moteurs de recherche", "Portails Juridiques", "Bibliothe`ques",
"Traduction en ligne"
** "Cours" -- "ge'ne'ralite's, constitutionnel,
administratif, civil, pe'nal, international, finances publiques,
fiscal, commercial, droits de l'homme, compare', autres" -- a
demystification of French legal education?
** "Revues" -- links to the French and international
online law journals -- to their Websites, at least, and
increasingly their online fulltext one hopes -- already a large
and growing list of well over 100 online journals
** "France" -- "Ge'ne'ral, Officiels, Eco-Fi,
Professionnels, Prive's, France +"
** "Europe" -- "Ge'ne'ral, Organisations re'gionales,
Droit communautaire, Pays"
** "International" -- "Organisations Internationales,
Organisations Internationales Non Gouvernementales, Continents,
Droit International, Relations Internationales et Strate'giques,
Droits de l'Homme"
** "Autres" -- "to be continued... send suggestions..."
** "Rechercher" -- "Moteur de recherche"
** "Plan du site"
A very complete and thorough site: lawyers -- good ones -- are
complete and thorough...
In these information - overloaded days -- time was, we were going
to organize all of this so as to avoid "information overload",
weren't we? -- there can be little substitute for these
"filtering" and "organization" and "presentation" tasks,
performed by an experienced librarian.
Sure, the users can get out on the Nets and find all of this
stuff themselves. But just try it! I am a user, and I have tried
-- using Yahoo!, Google, and the rest -- it is a time - consuming
and costly exercise in frustration, one which gets much worse,
not better, as new resources are added to the mass / mess. And
how much worse, not better, for the highly - trained but even
busier specialists in need of rapid access to just the right
piece of information -- lawyers, doctors, physicists,
engineers...
A law librarian still is better at finding things than a user is,
even online. So the lists of links and annotations, and their
selection and organization, which appear here courtesy of the
Bibliothe`que Cujas -- in what already is a very good and
probably just a beginning effort -- are invaluable, I think. They
are worth serious study by "information scientists" interested to
see how Cyberspace is going to evolve: for somebody busy, like a
lawyer, it -- Cyberspace -- is going to need law librarians.
--oOo--
And a new and somewhat alarming statistic: if or at least to the
extent true, then shame on the land which invented the Minitel
long before the Internet was available -- France must learn the
"XeroxPARC lesson", that it's not just invention or even "first
to market" which counts... got to keep that ball rolling, & got
to keep your eye on it... -- France is falling behind the
Austrians, the Finns and, 'zounds, even the _British_ now ---
"Pourcentage de foyers a` haut-de'bit par rapport au nombre total
de foyers connecte's" -- (Source Forrester Research, 2000)
2000 2001 2004 2005
Belgique 11,70% 19,20% 39,90% 49,70%
Allemagne 2,60% 10,60% 35,40% 48,20%
Sue`de 4,00% 11,70% 35,80% 47,90%
Pays-Bas 10,50% 15,20% 37,70% 47,30%
Danemark 2,40% 9,90% 33,30% 45,80%
Norve`ge 3,30% 6,80% 32,90% 45,60%
Luxembourg 12,50% 16,60% 32,50% 40,40%
Autriche 9,80% 12,90% 32,10% 40,00%
Finlande 2,10% 6,40% 27,80% 38,60%
Suisse 2,90% 5,20% 25,90% 36,20%
Grande-Bret 1,90% 6,20% 26,70% 35,70%
France 3,50% 7,10% 26,90% 33,60%
Espagne 3,10% 5,00% 22,90% 26,10%
Italie 0,70% 2,80% 22,00% 26,00%
Irlande 0,60% 1,20% 15,20% 23,30%
Portugal 1,10% 1,00% 9,70% 14,80%
Gre`ce 0,00% 0,10% 3,40% 6,60%
and, parsing things a little -- this is Europe, and in Europe
things never are simple --
"Le ca^ble et l'ADSL sont sans conteste du haut de'bit mais qu'en
est-il de l'ISDN (commercialise' en France sous la marque
Nume'ris par France Te'le'com). NetValue a choisi, apre`s y avoir
re'fle'chi, d'exclure l'ISDN du haut de'bit. Et, dans ce cas de
figure, la France s'assure clairement de la sixie`me place
europe'enne. En quoi l'ISDN n'est-il pas du haut de'bit ? Cette
technologie permet une connexion a` Internet a` 64 kbit/s au
minimum. C'est plus qu'un modem classique, mais seulement un peu
plus. Mais l'ISDN permet aussi de doubler la ligne de connexion
et de monter jusqu'a` 128 kbit/s. C'est beaucoup mieux, et c'est
souvent mieux que les de'bit actuels constate's en pratique sur
l'ADSL. Et dans le cas ou` l'on inclut l'ISDN dans le haut
de'bit, l'Allemagne (premier pays europe'en en termes de
connexions ISDN comme le souligne d'ailleurs NetValue) prend la
sixie`me place a` la France et le Danemark (deuxie`me sur l'ISDN
en Europe) prend la septie`me, tandis que la France arrive en...
huitie`me position..."
-- although smug Etats - unisiens need to tell me what the
difference is between a "regret" and an "apology", va`v the
Chinese this week... talk about "parsing"...
(The above from -- http://www.01net.com/rdn?oid=144054 --
"Haut de'bit : la France n'est pas premie`re en Europe" -- "Une
re'cente e'tude de NetValue pourrait laisser croire, dans sa
pre'sentation, que la France est en te^te du peloton des pays
europe'ens e'quipe's en haut de'bit. Malheureusement, l'Hexagone
se classe au mieux sixie`me..." Alain Steinmann, Le Nouvel Hebdo,
le 05/04/2001 a` 15h26 )
How is Vivendi ever going to compete with AOL Time Warner,
if Vivendi gets stuck developing applications for a 128 kbit/s
pipe?...
--oOo--
FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071 - 5916
*
| FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic
| journal published since 1992 as a small-scale,
| personal experiment, in the creation of large-
| scale "information overload", by Jack Kessler.
/ \ Any material written by me which appears in
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Copyright 1992- , by Jack Kessler,
all rights reserved except as indicated above.
--hjlm--
