This unique work presents over 350 French legal source materials,including the Constutution and related documents, extracts from codes, statutes and regulations, decisions of the courts (ranging from classic leading cases to ordinary situations which are the typical fare of the lowest courts), and notes by leading French academics and practitioners. These introduce the reader the French legal methodology, the respective roles of written and case law, interpretation of statutes and the creation of fundamental concepts of principles, methods of statutory drafting, the features of a judicial decision, and the corresponding need for doctrinal writings. The methodology is illustrated by the substantive content of five chapters, dealing, by way of explanatory text and source materials, with constitutional law, judicial review of administrative action, the foundation of contracts, civil liability for traffic accidents, and divorce, grounds and consequences. The chapters are preceded by a general introduction, explaining the French legal system, and are followed by a bibliography giving suggestions for further reading.
The second edition takes account of considerable judicial activism relating, inter alia, to the current concerns in contemporary France with the sensitive issues of immigration, asylum, deportation and nationality, the freedom to express adherence to a religious belief and the principle of ‘Laicite’ in state education, and the problems raised by new situations demanding an analysis of the relationship between the 1885 statute on traffic accidents and the common law of the Code civil.