The high European judiciaries from Strasbourg, to Luxembourg, to Paris have become powerful institutional actors whose authority has moved past the interpretive, to the normative, to the political, and to the constitutional levels. At the very moment, however, that the judiciary blossoms into a full-fledged institution of government, it must find some new way to construct its legitimacy. This chapter thus sketches out two case studies that offer different, yet related, attempts to reconstruct judicial legitimacy in contemporary Europe. The first focuses on the judicial appointments reforms concerning the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights. The second turns to ongoing debates concerning the use of judicial analytics, the reform of the traditional French mode of composing judicial decisions, and other measures designed to increase access to French judicial reasoning. In a long series of interlocking reforms, both the French and European high courts have managed to further increase their already burgeoning clout.

This chapter argues for the need to revise the features seen as distinctive by British scholars who have studied French administrative law in the past. There is a distinctive path dependence arising particularly from the Napoleonic reforms and from the separation of public and private law courts. But modern French administrative law is shaped by the rise of French constitutional law, EU law and the European Convention on Human Rights. The influence of these is illustrated. Contemporary trends in French public administration are also discussed.

The separation of French administrative courts and French administrative judges from the ordinary courts and judges predates the Revolution. As the activities of the public administration have grown, so has litigation against it. This has led to an increasing diversity of administrative courts and a narrowing of the judicial role of the Conseil d’Etat principally to questions of law. The Conseil d’Etat continues to perform a consultative role in providing legal advice to the government, especially on legislation. It also has a supervisory role over the work of other administrative courts. The background of members of the Conseil d’Etat is less legal than that of the lower administrative courts and their career path is more diverse, going well beyond judicial functions. These features are distinctive compared with administrative judiciaries in other countries.

Begins with the church–state relationship, noting the beginnings of laïcité in the French Revolution, as proclaimed in Article 10 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen 1789 and its continuing significance as embedded in Article 1 of the French Constitution and in the loi du 9 Decembre 1905. Considers current government policy towards religion, the modern interpretation of laïcité and its relevance to multiculturalism and diversity. Examines the fundamental freedoms: the rights to freedom of religion, to freedom of association/assembly and the freedom of expression. Examines concepts such as “religion” and “belief”. Focuses on how the fundamental rights impact upon the church–state relationship; the means whereby religion and the state are legally protected from each other; and considers the law relating to the manifesting of religion and beliefs. Examines the equality case law, then the case law dealing with the church–state relationship and areas of everyday life including education, employment, healthcare and retail services. It concludes with a section that addresses security from terrorism and from the destabilising effects of mass migration.